Bomb threats sent to Maricopa and Pima counties on Election Day contained identical language, according to copies of the threats obtained through public records requests.
Arizona was one of several states where polling places or election facilities were subject to bomb threats on Election Day. Ten of the state’s 15 counties received bomb threats that day, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Officials deemed the threats “non-credible” and during Election Day they stressed that no voters were in immediate danger or were kept from voting because of the threats. However, some locations had to evacuate, including in Maricopa County when a threat was aimed at the Superior Court building, where Recorder Stephen Richer’s Office is located.
On the night of the election, Richer was seen evacuating his office in response to one of the threats. Election offices in Cochise, La Paz, and Maricopa counties also evacuated, however, many others did not.
Cochise, Coconino, Gila, La Paz, Maricopa, Navajo, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai and Yuma counties all received Election Day bomb threats.
A threat emailed to Maricopa County, and obtained by the Mirror via a public records request, shares identical language to one obtained by VoteBeat in Pima County also through a public records request.
The email, with the subject line “My manifesto,” comes from an email account with the name “maga_alex” which is similar to the one received by Pima County with the same subject and a sender named “maga_sam.” Both emails have the same wording except for a change in the address where they claimed a bomb had been planted.
“It will not cause much damage to the building but there will be many wounded people when it explodes,” maga_alex said in the email to Maricopa. “I plan on remotely detonating the device as soon as there is a large police presence.”
Maricopa County Spokesman Fields Moseley told the Mirror in a written statement that the county’s training and technology prevented the possibility of the email harming the county’s tech.
“Maricopa County employs multiple intrusion prevention and detection security controls across all technology layers including email. Along with technology controls, Maricopa County performs security awareness training and simulated phishing testing,”Moseley said in the statement. “It was because of this training that the email was caught, reported and addressed rapidly and efficiently. While the email content is a threat, the email itself wouldn’t have harmed technology resources.”
Moseley said that the county could not comment further due to the on-going law enforcement investigation.
The FBI previously said on Nov. 5 that the emails “appear to originate from Russian email domains” and none of the threats were deemed credible. When asked for an update or if the FBI had engaged with the two email providers for the threats made public through records requests, the FBI deferred to their Nov. 5 statement.
The two email domains in the public records releases belong to companies called Mailum and CyberFear. Neither company responded to a request for comment.
At first glance, the websites appear to be different email services, however, when signing up for CyberFear, users are directed to Mailum, where they can choose between a @CyberFear.com email or a @Mailum.com email address.
Additionally, when viewing the source code on Mailum’s website, code for an analytics tool with the username “CyberFear” is visible.
Both companies bill themselves as privacy email options akin to ProtonMail or Tutanota that offer end-to-end encryption and “spy-proof” email services. The emails operate as a paid subscription model and in a post to the BlackHatWorld Forum in 2020, a now defunct account appearing to belong to CyberFear claimed that the service could send mass emails to up to 50 recipients.
Other states seemingly had it worse than the Grand Canyon State, like Georgia, which reported over 60 bomb threats on Election Day. An analysis of the threats by NBC News found that many targeted largely Democratic areas.
The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office said that it is continuing to work with law enforcement to investigate the threats. Despite the threats, elections across the country ran relatively smoothly.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.