REPORT: The FBI arrested a 20-year-old American Jewish man for posing as an Islamic State extremist, calling for terrorist attacks, claiming to be planning attacks in Australia and the United States, and providing information on bomb construction to a second party. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the same man, who it named as Florida resident Joshua Ryne Goldberg, also posed as a respected Australian lawyer in April to maliciously post a racist blog post on The Times of Israel.
Goldberg was arrested at his home by Florida police for alleged “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction,” the Herald reported Friday.
He had allegedly posed online as “Australi Witness,” and used the persona to urge jihadi attacks. He faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.
Though the Sidney Morning Herald described Goldberg, who lives with his parents in Jacksonville, as having “no real-world links with extremism,” federal officials said they were taking his actions very seriously.
“It will also be alleged that this person provided information over the Internet in an attempt to facilitate and encourage terrorist acts in Australia,” an official statement said.
Australian Federal Police confirmed they had helped the FBI track down Goldberg.
In April, Goldberg also allegedly posed online as prominent Australian lawyer Josh Bornstein, and posted a hateful and racist post in Bornstein’s name on The Times of Israel. The post was quickly removed by The Times of Israel. Goldberg had opened a blog on the website some weeks earlier, appropriating Bornstein’s name, biography, photograph and taking steps to lend the blog credibility.
He initially published a series of inoffensive posts, which turned out to have been taken from Bornstein’s articles elsewhere on the Internet. But after establishing his credibility on The Blogs platform, the imposter published an inflammatory blog post calling for the “extermination” of Palestinians. The post was also copied to an online archive with the intent of causing maximum harm. The Times of Israel swiftly removed the blog post and the entire blog. The Times of Israel also published an article expressing dismay that it “fell victim to such a malicious and hateful hoax,” apologized to Bornstein, and filed a complaint with the police.
According to the Herald report on Friday, Goldberg boasted when confronted that he had avoided detection, saying, “That guy has no idea. He thinks [online radical right-wing website] Daily Stormer did it.” He said he had also sought to obtain Bornstein’s address, to “freak him out even more.”
Posing as Australi Witness, Goldberg also allegedly urged followers to target Australian cartoonist Larry Pickering, who has previously depicted the Prophet Mohammad, the Herald reported Friday.
“The Australi Witness persona fooled members of the international intelligence community as well as journalists,R#8221; the Herald report said, “with well-known analyst Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group saying the ‘IS supporter’ held a ‘prestige’ position in online jihadi circles and was ‘part of the hard core of a group of individuals who constantly look for targets for other people to attack.’”
US officials told the Herald that Goldberg had admitted to distributing information on bomb-making and “further admitted that he believed the information would create a genuine bomb.
