A man who, according to federal prosecutors, threatened online to kill a Florida woman and called for the “extermination” of all Latinos, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Eric Lin, 35, was arrested in Seattle in August and pleaded guilty in January to knowingly and intentionally broadcasting a threatening communication in interstate commerce, authorities said.
In direct messages to the woman, who worked at a South Florida restaurant Lin had frequented, Lin sent more than 150 pages of threatening messages.
The direct messages included threats to kill her and her family, according to an FBI affidavit.
The messages in Lin’s accounts also spoke of a “racial war,” he said he followed Adolfo Hitler, expressed his support for President Donald Trump, and accused the woman of being “anti-American,” according to a criminal complaint.
Lin wrote in a message that he would not stop until “the Latino race is racially exterminated” and discussed the murder of Latinos in Miami and elsewhere, prosecutors said.
A federal judge sentenced Lin to five years in prison Tuesday, the maximum allowed under the charge he pleaded to, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement.
The victim is from Spain. He told the FBI that although the Facebook accounts were under fake names, he believed they were from Lin because they coincided with things he had said at the restaurant about Hitler and the mass shootings, according to court documents.
Lin admitted to investigators that the two Facebook accounts used in the abuse and threats were his, according to an affidavit. He was arrested in Seattle, but prosecutors say he is from Clarksburg, Maryland.
An email request for comment to Lin’s attorney was not immediately answered Thursday night.
Lin’s father wrote a letter to the judge before ruling that his son is not violent, but “likes to bluff” and speak blatantly on the Internet, and that “he previously had emotional problems with the girls but never used physical violence.” Lin’s father also apologized to the victim and his family.
