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Woman gets 18 months in prison for bomb threat
YOUNGSTOWN
A city woman has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after she pleaded guilty to making threatening communications and communicating false information in connection with a bomb threat against Vallourec Star.
Rakieda D. Cheatham, 27, of Broadview Avenue, drew the sentence Friday from U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster in Cleveland.
While in prison, she must undergo mental-health, substance-abuse and anger-management treatment.
She’ll be on supervised release for three years after prison and must make $123,000 in restitution to Vallourec.
Both of the charges in the FBI’s criminal complaint against Cheatham carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine upon conviction.
Cheatham made threatening phone calls and emails to three company employees after her temporary employment at the steelmaking company ended Feb. 27, according to an FBI affidavit.
Some of the emails sent March 27 contained references to bomb threats, which resulted in a three-hour evacuation of all 653 employees from the Martin Luther King Boulevard plant that day until the city police bomb squad deemed the area safe.
“The unnecessary evacuation caused considerable employee panic and significant financial loss to the company,” FBI agent Anthony J. Sano reported in the affidavit supporting the accusations.
Cheatham’s lawyer, Robert Duffrin, said his client suffers from mental illness.
Under questioning by Duffrin at an earlier court hearing, FBI Agent Thomas Donnelly acknowledged that agents who searched Cheatham’s home and car and arrested her May 1 found no guns, bombs or bomb-making materials.
Vallourec hired Cheatham on June 23, 2014, in its quality-assurance department to assist the company in preparing for a forthcoming audit, and her employment ended as the project for which she was hired was coming to a close, the affidavit said.