fbpx

JCC bomb threat suspect reportedly used Bitcoin, Google Voice

[additional-authors]
March 24, 2017
The JCC bomb threat suspect, identified as Michael Kaydar by The Daily Beast, leaving court in Rishon Lezion, Israel, March 23. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.

The Israeli-American teenager suspected of perpetrating more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish institutions used technologies including Google Voice, a call forwarding service, and Bitcoin, a digital currency, to make the threats.

According to an article in The Daily Beast, the 19-year-old suspect’s name is Michael Kaydar. Israel’s anti-fraud squad arrested Kaydar at his home in southern Israel and searched the premises on Thursday.

He also is accused of a series of threats made in Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the past six months, according to reports in Israel, and is reported to have called in threats to the Israel Police two months ago regarding Israeli educational institutions.

To hide his identity, Kaydar used a technology called SpoofCard that masks a number’s caller ID, according to the Daily Beast. When police subpoenaed SpoofCard’s parent company to trace the call’s real number, they learned that he had called from a disposable Google Voice number.

He paid for SpoofCard through Bitcoin, also untraceable, and routed his internet through proxies, making his IP address untraceable as well. In addition, he masked his voice in the calls to sound like a woman.

Kaydar was caught after he forgot to trace his internet connection through a proxy server, allowing police to trace his IP address, which led to his home.

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Trump in ‘The Twilight Zone’

With moral clarity not clouded by anti-Trump, anti-Israel hysteria, everyone should be able to get behind this just war against Iran—not unlike Israel’s just war in Gaza.

Hating Trump More Than Terrorists

While one of the world’s most evil regimes is taking a beating, much of the mainstream media, Hollywood and our cultural elite would rather focus on who’s doing the beating.

The ‘Scream’ Franchise Is Back—Sans Antisemites.

It seems that Melissa Barrera – and those who followed her off set – may have inadvertently saved the franchise from itself. In getting back to basics, the film found a way to connect with audiences from both the past and the present.

The Sweet Song of Survival

There is a second form of sacred survival: to survive as a nation. And that too takes precedence over everything.

Print Issue: Iran | March 5, 2026

Success in the war against Iran – which every American and Israeli should hope for – will only strengthen the tendency of both leaders to highlight their dominant personalities as the state axis, at the expense of the boring institutions that serve them.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.