Alaska State Troopers say a Seward man left a threatening message online for Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office, signing it as someone else in a bid to throw off investigators.
Matthew Edward Stanley, 22, is charged with second-degree terroristic threatening and criminal impersonation in the case, which was filed Monday.
According to a charging document against Stanley, the governor’s office received an April 12 feedback form containing the name and contact information of another Seward man. The message called on Dunleavy to raise pay for members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, including the listed sender and his son.
“Or else everyone at ilwu and my son will take a stand here at seward,” the message read. “I will (expletive) bomb and shoot you with my son.”
Grant Robinson, a spokesman for Dunleavy’s office, declined to comment on the case Wednesday.
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According to the charges, data from the state Office of Information Technology indicated that the message was sent through a virtual private network or VPN, which can mask users’ internet activity. But the network’s operator told troopers it had no account associated with the listed sender.
During a May visit to Seward to investigate the threat, troopers quickly determined that the man and his son didn’t send the messages, the charges said. The father shared a disparaging text message about his son he had received, as well as a negative review on the local ILWU website that alluded to them. Troopers investigated both messages, but couldn’t identify the original authors.
When troopers asked if the men had issues with anyone, the son mentioned that Stanley had disliked him since high school – and had recently been fired from a job where they worked together. Troopers found that the email address Stanley had used to apply for a 2024 Permanent Fund dividend had also been used to create an account at the VPN linked to the threat.
According to the charges, troopers obtained online data associated with Stanley’s Google account, which allegedly showed two contacts with the VPN on the date the threat was made. Troopers said it also included numerous searches of both the father and son’s names, queries on how to make an anonymous email and whether someone can sue you for making false allegations.
The charges go on to quote several other recent searches from “what happens when a state governor gets threatened,” to “do state governor take threats seriously” and “what happens when someone emails a death threat to a governor a state.”
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Court records show that a summons was issued for Stanley on Tuesday.
The charges come a week after Kenai resident Arther Graham, 46, pleaded guilty in federal court to threatening a U.S. senator in a September online comment form. Soldotna public radio station KDLL reported that Graham had threatened to remove the senator’s skin and wear it.
Charging documents in that case did not name the senator, but indicated the recipient was a woman.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
