A Deer Park man was arrested on Wednesday in a failed $2 million extortion plot last month in which he allegedly planted an explosive device at The Home Depot in Huntington where he worked and threatened to place three more devices at other company stores, federal officials said.
The employee, Daniel Sheehan, 50, was arrested at home by FBI agents on a charge of attempted extortion by use of an explosive device following a joint investigation by the FBI, the Suffolk Police Department the Suffolk District Attorney, said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Loretta E. Lynch.
He's scheduled to be arraigned on the charge Thursday afternoon in federal court in Central Islip. If convicted he faces 30 years mandatory minimum sentence in prison and a maximum of life in prison, Lynch said.
Sheehan allegedly sent an anonymous ransom letter to the Home Depot in Huntington saying that he had hidden a bomb in the lighting department to show his ability to place a bomb in a store without being detected, federal officials said.
The letter warned that if Home Depot did not pay a $2 million ransom, he would shut down all of the chain's Long Island stores on Black Friday, the traditional shopping day after Thanksgiving, by detonating three pipe bombs containing roofing nails at three other store locations, federal officials said.
The three locations were not identified.
The package was discovered Oct. 15 in the Huntington store, in a shopping center on New York Avenue north of the Long Island Rail Road Station. It was safely removed by Suffolk Emergency Services officers, federal officials said.
The store, which had about 50 customers and employees at the time, was evacuated.
Copyright 2012 - Newsday
McClatchy-Tribune News Service