Courts: Up to 800 people in South Sound threatened

A former human resources manager for Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA was sentenced Friday to three years and five months in federal prison for making thousands of obscene and sexually threatening phone calls while using an Internet telephone "spoofing service."

Daniel Christopher Leonard, 32, of Olympia had pleaded guilty to one count of cyber stalking and four counts of making threatening communications in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

Leonard used a website that allows people to disguise their voices, as well as their identifying phone number, Olympia police Cmdr. Tor Bjornstad has said. Leonard used the website to call 750 to 800 people in the Olympia area, Bjornstad has said, including co-workers.

He also used the website to make obscene and threatening phone calls in Monterey, Calif., where he had lived before moving to the Olympia area, court papers state.

Leonard terrorized his victims, in some cases using his knowledge of his victims’ physical appearance “in ways that proved he was physically close to them at the time he conveyed the threats,” a sentencing memorandum by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma states. His determination to “ratchet up the fear” of his victims warranted a prison term at the high end of the sentencing range, Warma wrote.

Many of the victims “altered their lives because of the phone calls; quitting jobs, moving and altering their activities. … Many canceled their cell phone numbers, only to start receiving the calls at home or at work,” a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle states.

Read more at :theolympian.com