Acting United States Attorney William J. Edwards (Northern District of Ohio) announced that David A. Tuason, of Pepper Pike, Ohio was sentenced today on two counts of transmitting threatening interstate communications and six counts of mailing threatening communications. The Court sentenced Tuason to 46 months imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release. The Court also ordered that Tuason’s mail and emails are subject to monitoring. Tuason’s sentence follows his April 2008 guilty pleas to two counts of transmitting threatening interstate communications, 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), and six counts of mailing threatening communications 18 U.S.C. § 876©.

Tuason engaged in an elaborate scheme of sending racially motivated threatening communications via the United States Postal Service and electronic mail intended to threaten and intimidate with bodily injury African-American males known to affiliate with white females. Tuason threatened an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, athletes, and entertainers as well as children of mixed racial parents. Tuason’s threatening communications were sent to victims across the United States as well as locally in the Cleveland, Ohio area and at times threats were made to blow up the facility or building in which the targeted victim was located.

The investigation was conducted by the Cleveland Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United State Attorney Dean M. Valore.