Felon sentenced for threats to Social Security offices

By Steve Kanigher

Monday, May 3, 2010 | 4:54 p.m.

A convicted felon who made threatening telephone calls to several Social Security offices after his benefits were terminated was sentenced Friday to 46 months in prison and three years of supervised release, Nevada's U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said today.

Leon Muhammad, 54, whose address is unknown to authorities, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt. Muhammad, who was arrested on Dec. 17 in Columbia, S.C., pleaded guilty on March 31 to making threatening communications in interstate commerce. He was sentenced at the top of the available sentencing range because he had two prior violent felony convictions in New York and New Jersey and was determined to be a career offender.

Court records stated that from 2005 through November 2009 Muhammad received retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration before the agency terminated those benefits. Between Nov. 20 and Dec. 3, Muhammad made several threatening telephone calls from Las Vegas to Social Security call service centers in Baltimore, Salinas, Calif., and Auburn, Wash., in an attempt to secure the reinstatement of his benefits. At one point, Muhammad told a representative that if he did not receive payment in his bank account by a set time later that day, he would go to the Social Security office in Las Vegas, where he was vacationing, and create another "Valentine Blood Bath."

When asked to go to the Las Vegas office to discuss his case, Muhammad stated that he could not appear because he was afraid he would "go postal" on people in the office. He also vowed to destroy the office, according to court records.

Muhammad told agency employees: "You are all going to pay. If you only knew my frame of mind. It is what it is ... I will make you pay. I think you all have cut me."

The case was investigated by the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bradley Giles.