A New York money manager with a long history of legal battles with the government has been charged with threatening to kill 47 US officials, including the nation's top securities and commodities regulators. Vincent McCrudden, 49, last month allegedly posted online an "execution list" naming officials, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.
Federal prosecutors said the threat came shortly after the CFTC brought an enforcement action accusing the former commodities trader and two of his companies with operating unregistered investments. McCrudden threatened officials in emails and web postings at the SEC, CFTC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the National Futures Association, authorities said.
"Go buy a gun, and lets get to work in taking back our country from these criminals," McCrudden allegedly wrote, in a statement calling for the four regulators to be abolished. "I will be the first one to lead by example."
The arrest comes amid heightened concern for the safety of public officials after last Saturday's mass shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Arizona. Six people died, including federal judge John Roll. "This is a crime of violence," Assistant US Attorney Christopher Caffarone said at a Friday afternoon hearing in the federal court in Central Islip, New York, located east of New York City. McCrudden, looking haggard and dressed in blue jeans and a black fleece sweatshirt, was denied bail at the hearing. He did not enter a plea.
"The allegations in this complaint are incredibly frightening and intimidating to any public official," US Magistrate Judge E. Thomas Boyle said at the hearing. Boyle called the content of McCrudden's alleged emails and postings "a real threat, as far as this court is concerned." McCrudden has worked on Wall Street for more than 20 years, specialising in commodities, derivatives and foreign exchange, according to his biography on the website of his company, Alnbri Management LLC.
The biography also said he has "spent the past 13 years and counting combating a colluded Government attempt to discredit and harass Mr McCrudden through repeated bogus procedures." McCrudden also was an amateur boxer and played professional soccer in the now-defunct North American Soccer League, the biography said. The government said McCrudden, of Dix Hills, New York, has been living for the last few months in Singapore.
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