In a case that highlights the serious consequences of fabricating terrorist threats, Daniel Sandoval, a 29-year-old from Santa Fe Springs, has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after pleading guilty to spreading false information about imminent terrorist plots targeting U.S. military sites in California. According to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Sandoval submitted a total of eight fabricated tips to the Department of Defense over three days in March 2021, erroneously accusing several women of planning mass attacks on facilities in the L.A. and Orange counties.
The first falsified tip provided by Sandoval on March 21, included a claim that a woman identified as “S.C.” intended to bomb military vehicles at a Seal Beach Navy facility coupled with civilian vehicles, this act was supposed to set off a series of false alerts that sent the Department of Defense and local authorities into a state of emergency, thus sparking investigations and forcing evacuations of military personnel, as per the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California. In the subsequent days, Sandoval filed seven more tips with equally unfounded allegations, each featuring a different woman as the purported perpetrator of various violent scenarios at other military locations as if to weave a pattern of deceit draped over the fabric of national security.
United States District Judge Stephen V. Wilson handed down the sentence on Monday, marking an end to a saga that had substantial ripple effects. Sandoval’s actions were not victimless. KTLA stated that prosecutors emphasized that Sandoval’s “unlawful conduct harmed not only the military bases he targeted and the personnel living or working on those bases, but also harmed the innocent women who he claimed were perpetrating these dangerous threats.”
The FBI’s Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted an extensive investigation following the bogus alerts, leading to Sandoval’s arrest and subsequent guilty plea, as detailed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California. Assisted by U.S. Attorneys Alexander H. Tran of the General Crimes Section and James A. Santiago of the International Narcotics Money Laundering and Racketeering Section, the case was prosecuted, sending a clear message about the grave implications of reporting false threats.
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