Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Man threatened to pop fentanyl-laced balloons over EDC festival, police say

Abraham Hurtado-Castrejon

metro police

Abraham Hurtado-Castrejon

A North Las Vegas man was arrested last week ahead of the Electric Daisy Carnival after messaging the event’s founder on Instagram threatening to pop balloons filled with fentanyl at the popular music festival over a ticket refund, according to a Metro Police arrest report. 

Abraham Hurtado-Castrejon, 30, was arrested Oct. 22 for making threats or conveying false information concerning acts of terrorism and ownership of a gun by an undocumented person, according to the arrest report.

Police were alerted last Friday by an employee of Insomniac Holdings LLC, the promoter of EDC, who said the Instagram page of the company’s chief executive, Pasquale Rotella, received an audio message from an account stating, “this mother f----- didn’t send me a refund, so now there’s (obscenity) with fentanyl balloons up in that b----. You just pop em and BOOM,” police said in the report. 

Insomniac reached out to Hurtado-Castrejon through direct message and offered a refund, but he replied, “Yup bit its to late to try to fix it (sic),” and followed up with another message stating, “Yall had two years.” 

Police researched the Instagram page and found several posts of Hurtado-Castrejon cleaning guns and other posts of him standing in a tactical vest with a rifle believed to be an AR-15 slung on his chest, according to the arrest report. Another post from Oct. 21 showed a White Chevrolet S10 pickup truck with a license plate that police were able to trace back to Hurtado-Castrejon. 

Insomniac confirmed to police that Hurtado-Castrejon had a ticket for EDC, and because of his criminal history, police created an “exigency of stopping the imminent threat,” according to the arrest report. 

Because Hurtado-Castrejon’s threats were direct in nature, police said, and because the three-day festival sold out the Las Vegas Motor Speedway with about 134,000 people in attendance, police surveilled his residence and stopped him outside of a market in North Las Vegas, according to the arrest report. 

In an interview with officers, Hurtado-Castrejon was asked about the EDC event and he told officers he was not going to carry through with the threat, police said. When asked what prompted Hurtado-Castrejon to make the threat, he said he bought EDC tickets for $349 last year but wasn’t offered a refund despite the event being canceled due to COVID-19, and was instead offered to use the ticket for this year’s event.

An Insomniac representative said Hurtado-Castrejon was issued a refund in May 2020.

Hurtado-Castrejon said he used the threat of fentanyl to grab Insomniac’s attention and get a refund and gave his other response because he was angry that they “owed a lot of people refunds,” according to the report. 

Detectives asked Hurtado-Castrejon if he owned any guns, and he told police about his AR-15 that he’s fired on multiple occasions at a firing range. Police searched his residence and recovered what appeared to be a 3D-printed AR-15 pistol, along with multiple parts and accessories, according to the report. 

Hurtado-Castrejon was arraigned Tuesday and has a preliminary hearing on Feb. 24 in North Las Vegas Justice Court, according to online records. His attorney, California-based Jose Carlos Pallares, was not available for comment.