Emil Apreda also threatened to bomb Black Lives Matter protesters and MPs if £10m not paid, investigators say. A man who posed as a neo-Nazi has been jailed for threatening to bomb an NHS hospital at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Emil Apreda, a 33-year-old Italian man living in Berlin, threatened to place an explosive device in an unspecified English hospital unless he was paid £10m in Bitcoin. His message purported to be from the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, but investigators said he used it as a “front for his extortion” and that he did not have access to a bomb. Apreda emailed his threat to the NHS on 25 April 2020, but sent the same message to the National Crime Agency (NCA) control centre hours later. Officials said they did not publicise the incident over fears that people would not seek hospital treatment because of safety concerns, and that Covid patients on ventilators would die if evacuated. Tim Court, the head of investigations in the NCA’s cyber crime unit, said the threats were not known outside a “very tight circle” of people, including senior counter-terror police officers.
via independent: ‘Neo-Nazi’ jailed for threatening to bomb NHS hospital at height of pandemic