Man charged in plot to bomb Sept. 11 memorial in Missouri

ORANGE PARK, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man who claimed in online forums to have inspired terrorists in Australia and Texas was arrested after telling an informant how to build a homemade bomb to attack a 9/11 memorial in Missouri, according to a criminal complaint.

Joshua Ryne Goldberg, 20, is charged with distributing information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Thursday.

Goldberg — of Orange Park, about 15 miles south of Jacksonville — began communicating online with an FBI informant in July, giving information on how to build a bomb using a pressure cooker and shrapnel dipped in rat poison, according to the complaint.

Goldberg instructed the informant to place the bomb at a memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, commemorating the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the complaint says. No bomb was produced.

The complaint quotes the suspect as telling the informant: "Get FAR away from the bomb, brother. There's going to be chaos when it goes off. Shrapnel, blood and panicking ..."

Earlier this year, a federal agent traced online messages from someone claiming to have inspired a terrorist attack in Texas and a terror plot in Australia to an account in Orange Park, according to the complaint. The suspect told the informant he had been helping a jihadist in Melbourne, Australia, but lost contact with him.