A man from Lehighton, Pa., was sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge to 18 months in prison for making Internet threats against Jews.
Corbin Kauffman, 32, received his sentencing on Tuesday after pleading guilty to one count of criminal information. He admitted that on March 13, 2019, he posted on social media a digitally created image of his hand aiming an AR-15 rifle at a group of Jewish men praying in a synagogue.
On the same day, Kauffman shared a video of the October 2018 deadly shooting at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh and uploaded a separate post in support of the 19-year-old gunman. He also posted a picture of vandalism he committed by defacing a display case at the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center in Ocean City, Md., with white supremacist and anti-Semitic stickers.
Kauffman used “various aliases online to post hundreds of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-Muslim messages, images and videos,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
“Several of these posts … included threats to various religious and racial groups. Other posts expressed a desire to commit genocide and ‘hate crimes,’ and called for or depicted images of the killing of Jewish people, black people and Muslim people,” it said.
U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Bruce Brandler said, “Vulnerable communities are entitled to feel safe in living their lives and exercising their own rights. Under federal law, when you target a person or a group because of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability or sexual orientation, that is a hate crime. And we take hate crimes very seriously in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.”
