COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) - A New York man was arrested Tuesday on charges he has been cyberstalking a Maryland woman for months, making threats that included soliciting people online to rape, kill and decapitate her in exchange for Bitcoin, federal authorities said.
Desmond Babloo Singh, 19, also “swatted” the woman, summoning police to her family’s Baltimore County home by emailing a bogus bomb threat, a U. S. Department of Homeland Security special agent said in a court filing.
The woman, who isn’t named in the document, lives with her family in Maryland when she isn’t attending an unidentified college in New York. She was a friend of Singh’s older sister in middle school for one year before his family moved to Texas and has never met Singh in person, the agent said.
Since April, Singh allegedly has used more than 100 different social media, electronic communication and phone accounts to send harassing and unsolicited messages to the woman.
“These messages include express and implied threats of death and bodily injury, sexualized violence, and racial slurs,” the agent wrote.
Online court records in New York and Maryland don’t list a defense attorney for Singh.
Singh was expected to make his initial court appearance Tuesday in New York to face federal charges of cyberstalking, causing intentional damage to a protected computer, aggravated identity theft, e-mailing a hoax bomb threat and murder for hire. A date for his initial court appearance in Baltimore wasn’t immediately set.
After police responded to the fake bomb threat at the woman’s home on July 20, investigators in Temple, Texas, spoke to Singh’s parents, who said their son had been attending a college in New York. But they believed he was homeless and wasn’t enrolled in school during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In October, the woman contacted Baltimore County police to report that a user named “desmond” on the Telegram instant messaging platform was soliciting someone to kill her, according to the agent’s affidavit.
“You will cut her head,” the user named “desmond” wrote to another user who asked for payment and replied, “and ill make sure she gonna die.”
Singh also is accused of accessing the woman’s online accounts, changing passwords to lock her out and posting offensive images and messages on them. He “doxed” her, publicly posting her personal information online and encouraging others to harass her, the agent said. Singh also allegedly sent harassing messages to an ex-boyfriend of the woman because he apparently saw him as a romantic rival.
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