An Oregon man received a five-year jail sentence Wednesday for a series of bomb threats he made to Jewish medical facilities in the United States in 2021.

Domagoj Patkovic “endangered patients and diverted precious law enforcement resources to advance his hateful agenda against people of the Jewish faith.  His actions fed a rising tide of antisemitism in America,” stated United States Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr., after the sentencing in a federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“Our Office will continue to prosecute dangerous bomb threats and swatting schemes to the fullest extent of the law, especially those motivated by hate, and those targeting vulnerable communities in hospitals and care centers,” he added.

Swatting is the practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.

Beginning at least as early as May 2021, Patkovic made anonymous phone calls to at least six Jewish hospitals and nursing homes in New York in which he made violent threats using explicit antisemitic language.

According to the indictment, in one call he told a hospital receptionist in Brooklyn, “I’ve planted bombs in all the rooms. I’m going to kill all the kikes.”

In another call, he claimed, “You have 15 bags full of C-4 with phones attached in all the maintenance rooms. If you don’t pay a million dollars, I’ll blow you sky-high.”

In a third case, he said, “All those kikes are going to fly to heaven for Allah.”

On at least one occasion in September 2021, the hoax bomb threat resulted in a partial evacuation and lockdown of an entire hospital on Long Island as dozens of emergency squad personnel came to search the site, which took hours.

Police responded several times to Patkovic’s threats but never found bombs in any of the locations he called.

The 31-year-old, who lived in Portland, even livestreamed his calls on the Discord social media platform to make more of an impact.

Dozens of people watched and cheered him on, the indictment said.

Although marketed to gamers, Discord has become known in recent years as a platform used by white nationalists and other extremists.

It took two years for the authorities, including the FBI, to find Patkovic.

The maximum sentence he could have received was 15 years in prison, but it was reduced in exchange for a plea deal in which he confessed to his crimes.

Image - Idictment photo