A Florida man is facing two years in prison and a potential fine of $250,000 after admitting to having bombarded employees at a Hartford insurance company with dozens of harassing phone calls over the course of a year.
Brent Q. Hansen, 49, a Canadian citizen who lives in Seminole, Fla., pleaded guilty in federal court in Bridgeport to one count of making harassing telephone calls to Travelers Insurance, a charge that stemmed from a grand jury indictment handed down in July.
Between March 2011 and June 2012, Hansen made multiple phone calls, mostly toward two specific employees, at Travelers Insurance office in Hartford and other locations in the area, leaving approximately 270 harassing voicemail messages, according to a press release from the U.S. Justice Department.
It’s unclear how Hansen knew these two individuals, as federal officials didn’t specify in a press release issued Friday.
According to court documents released to the press, Hansen repeatedly told the employees they were “cursed” and that “God will damn their souls,” making claims that they were “murderers, rapists, terrorists and criminals.”
The calls then took a threatening nature, when the defendant would say that “if he were a dangerous person, the victim would be dead or assassinated,” although he would then go on to say he’s not a dangerous person so the victims should be “thankful,” the affidavits stated.
After the employees brought this to the police’s attention, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation when to Hansen’s home in Florida in September 2011 to confront him about it. The FBI agents told Hansen he could be arrested if he continued to make these threatening calls, and the defendant acknowledged this by signing an affidavit saying that he understood the legal ramifications.
The harassing calls ceased for about a two-week period after the FBI visit, but they started right back up again after that, officials said.
Hansen is scheduled to be sentence before Judge Janet C. Hall on Oct. 18. He remains in federal custody since his arrest on July 5.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Neeraj Patel is the prosecuting the case, and the FBI investigated it.
