A prison inmate has pleaded guilty to sending threatening letters containing bomb threats to a US congressman, a senator, and a Southern Tier judge.
The US Court for the Northern District of New York announced that Dennis Nelson, 51, had confessed to mailing the letters in 2018 and 2019 while serving his sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Federal Correctional Facility in Devens, Massachusetts.
According to the court, Nelson admitted to mailing a letter to U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy in Binghamton in August 2018, in which he threatened to bomb the federal courthouse and kill the judge and his staff. He later mailed letters in July 2019 to U.S. Representative Anthony Brindisi and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, threatening to kill them with bombs.
Nelson has been convicted of the charges of mailing the threatening letters, and he faces a possible sentence of seven years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of post-release supervision. The court has yet to schedule his sentencing date.
FingerLakes1.com is the region’s leading all-digital news publication. The company was founded in 1998 and has been keeping residents informed for more than two decades. Have a lead? Send it to [email protected].