Man Convicted Of Cyberstalking, Sending Threatening Messages To Parkland Families
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - A 22-year-old man was convicted Tuesday of cyberstalking and sending kidnapping threats to families of victims of a mass shooting in Parkland.
A federal jury in South Florida found Brandon Michael Fleury, of Santa Ana, California, guilty of interstate transmission of a threat to kidnap, and interstate cyberstalking.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 2 and faces a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison.
Feds say Fleury used thirteen different Instagram accounts, using aliases including alleged Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, and others, to target families and friends of Parkland shooting victims with messages over the course of three weeks between Dec. 22, 2018 and Jan. 11, 2019.
Many of the messages taunted the message recipients about the deaths of loved ones, authorities said.
Messages included statements like, "With the power of my AR-15, you all die," and "With the power of my AR-15, I take your loved ones away from you PERMANENTLY."
Law enforcement said they found thousands of saved images of Ted Bundy, images of the targeted victims, and saved screenshots of the messages that he had sent the victims in Fleury's tablets.
