LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - A 30-year-old Iowa man who mailed bomb threats to the FBI office in Omaha has been sentenced to time served.
Matthew Fell, of Waterloo, Iowa, was sentenced Wednesday in Lincoln by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf. Fell had pleaded guilty to making a false threat, and has been behind bars for 15 months while awaiting final disposition of his case. Kopf also ordered Fell to serve three years of supervised release.
During the hearing, Fell asked Kopf several times to delay the sentencing so Fell could obtain a third psychological evaluation.
“I demand that you accept my request,” Fell said to Kopf. The judge declined, saying another evaluation wasn’t necessary.
Online court records show that Fell had pleaded guilty last August, but delays on his case included two evaluations. The Lincoln Journal Star reported (https://bit.ly/1f7C7S5 ) that one doctor was inconclusive about Fell’s mental condition and another diagnosed Fell as schizophrenic.
Fell’s attorney, Michael Hansen, said he thought Fell was competent for sentencing but also was “mentally ill to a significant degree.”
Court documents say postal workers at a Lincoln post office found an envelope in June 2012 that had “This is a Bomb!” written on it. There was no bomb in the envelope, but it did contain another envelope that was addressed to the FBI in Omaha. That envelope contained a piece of paper and a thumb drive. Omaha postal workers found a similar envelope a week later.
Investigators said Fell admitted putting them in the mail “to get everybody’s attention” about his complaints regarding a security company in Waterloo, Iowa.
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