CBS News: Maine Native Based In Romania At Center Of School Threats Probe
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A Maine native now based in Romania says he has received a subpoena from authorities over the threatening emails that shut down nearly 1,000 Los Angeles schools, according to CBS News.
Vincent Canfield, who says he just relocated to Romania within the past two weeks, told CBS News' Jeff Pegues he can pinpoint where the emails came through the IP address used to register the account. Canfield runs an email server named for a vulgar term for male genitalia.
According to CBS News, Canfield said he has sent location information about the alleged hoax threat to the New York City Police Department in response to a subpoena. Canfield told CBS News he also received a subpoena from Clark County Las Vegas Schools.
With the investigation continuing, Canfield told CBS the email server has been locked.
"The account can't be logged into," he said. "It means that the user can't send email (and) can't delete anything. So the account is pretty much just frozen at this point in time."
Threats emailed to several Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board members prompted the decision to shut down all of the district's educational facilities, which include more than 900 schools and 187 public charter schools, as a precaution.
The threats, which were also sent to other big city school districts like New York City Schools, were eventually determined to be a hoax.
The 21-year-old Maine native, who also sent CBS News a picture of himself posing with two rifles, would not comment on whether he moved to Romania to evade U.S. laws. Canfield's Twitter account makes several references to the school shutdown in Los Angeles, and also posts an image of the subpoena he received from the NYPD. (Warning: Link contains explicit language)
Though the subpoena sent by the New York Police Department warns Canfield "not to disclose or notify any customer or third party of the existence of this subpoena," he posted it on social media. He also posted two audio recordings of phone calls he says he made to police personnel, in which they acknowledge that the subpoena was not confidential.
On Twitter, Canfield said he was surprised LAUSD decided to close down after receiving an email from a service that's often used for jokes and pranks.
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