The Israeli-American teenager suspected of making more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish institutions across America has been named as Michael Kaydar.
The 19-year-old suspect is thought to have used technologies including Google Voice, a call forwarding service, and Bitcoin, a digital currency, to make the threats, according to the Daily Beast.
Israeli police arrested him at his home in southern Israel and detained him at Rishon Letzion Magistrate's Court yesterday.
According to the report in the Daily Beast, Kaydar used a technology called SpoofCard to mask caller ID. When police subpoenaed SpoofCard’s parent company to trace the call’s real number, they discovered that he had called from a disposable Google Voice number and, with the help of technology, disguised his voice to sound like a woman.
The suspect, who has Israeli and American citizenship, allegedly paid for the service through digital currency Bitcoin, which is also untraceable and also made his IP address undetectable.
But an apparent slip up, whereby he forgot to trace his internet connection through a proxy server, eventually enabled police to track him down.
The suspect’s father was also arrested, and a judge ordered both to remain in custody for eight additional days, Haaretz reported.
The Israeli newspaper reported that the IDF had refused to draft Kaydar after finding him unfit for service.
The suspect's motive is unknown, but police accuse him of hundreds of incidents involving threats to institutions around the world, including Israel, over a period of two or three years.
He is said to have been home-schooled by his parents and never to have been educated outside the home.
Attorney Galit Bash, who represents the suspect, said that "this is a young man without a criminal record who from a young age suffers from severe medical problems. There is concern that his medical condition affects his cognitive functioning”.
She added: "Therefore, we asked the court to order that the young man be referred for a medical examination. The court accepted our claims and instructed the police to examine the young man's medical condition."
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