(KRON) — A former Apple software engineer has been convicted of threatening FBI agents after he asked the agents to investigate the tech giant.
A federal jury convicted Brian Broderick on March 8 of making threats to the FBI after a weeklong trial, US Attorney Ismail Ramsey announced. A jury convicted Broderick of one count of transmitting a communication containing a threat of injury.
A 32-year-old Santa Cruz man contacted the FBI multiple times in 2021 and 2022 to report several problems, including allegations against Apple, prosecutors said.
He believed the tech company was spying and conspiring against him, court records state. Multiple Apple employees told Santa Cruz police they received threatening and erratic emails from their co-worker while he was on sick leave, court records show.
The Santa Cruz Police Department wrote that Broderick was paranoid and “in the midst of a mental crisis,” court records state. SCPD issued a restraining order against him for gun violence, and law enforcement officials confiscated the gun from his storage locker.
On December 27, 2021, Apple issued a restraining order against Broderick accusing him of harassment. The judge issued a restraining order for 3 years.
An FBI special agent emailed Broderick to follow up on his reports on Apple in May 2022. Over the next several weeks, Broderick sent a series of “escalating and derogatory emails” to agents in the FBI’s San Francisco Division, prosecutors said.
On June 1, 2022, Broderick sent another email to the FBI stating that the FBI agent was “an American who is literally hunting a traitorous idiot,” according to court records.
Broderick continued by warning the agents, “Act on this in . . . 24 hours, or I’ll go further than taking your livelihood.” That same day, he posted a video of himself surveilling an FBI office on his YouTube channel.
Broderick faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on June 24.