A homeless Florida man was arrested Wednesday and charged with plotting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange to force a “reboot” or “reset” of the US government, according to a criminal complaint.
Harun Abdul-Malik Yener came under FBI scrutiny in February after agents received a tip that he was storing bomb-making schematics in a storage unit in Coral Springs, the complaint says.
After they got Yener’s permission, FBI agents searched the storage unit in early March and found spiral-bound notebooks with drawings of land mines, explosives, missiles and other improvised explosive devices, according to the complaint.
Yener told agents at the time that he was creating “rockets” with very “volatile” chemical mixtures that would explode if they were mixed incorrectly, the complaint says. He also claimed he was recruited via Facebook Messenger to join ISIS overseas but ultimately decided against it because he believed the terrorist group would not succeed in achieving its objectives, the complaint says.
Near the end of the interview, he says, he told the FBI agents he was waiting for the right moment to take action within the US “I am just waiting for some kind of hole to open up and I can go, ah, there it “I’ll know it when I see it,” he said, according to the complaint.
Armed with a search warrant, agents returned to the unit a few days later and discovered “bombmaking sketches, numerous watches with timers, electronic circuit boards, and other electronics” that “could be used for constructing explosive devices,” the complaint says.
Undercover FBI agents later made contact with Yener and convinced him they wanted to help him carry out an attack, it says. They tracked Yener throughout the summer and into the fall.
In October, he asked an undercover agent to drive him to a Walmart, where he picked up items and tools — including a soldering iron and a multimeter voltage reader — that he needed to construct an improvised explosive device, the complaint says. Afterward, he told the undercover agent that he settled on the New York Stock Exchange as the location where he would detonate the IED, according to the complaint.
“There is one place that would be hella easy…the stock exchange, that would be a great hit,” Yener said, according to the complaint. “Tons of people would support it. They would see it and think dude, this guy makes sense, they are…robbing us. “So that’s perfect.”
Days later, he told a group of undercover FBI agents that he wanted to bomb the stock exchange the week before Thanksgiving. He also said he wanted to send a statement to a news station that would explain his motivation and objectives, the complaint says.
On Nov. 12, he made a series of audio recordings with the help of an FBI undercover agent and said he wanted to send them to NBC News either the day of the bombing or the day after, the complaint says.
“What you’ve just witnessed at the Stock Exchange…was just the beginning of a new era. A new revolution,” he said on one of the recordings, according to the complaint.
“We ask and encourage others to follow suit in their pursuit for change,” he added, it says.
Yener was charged with the attempted use of an explosive to damage or destroy any building used in interstate or foreign commerce. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
His arrest was first reported by Seamus Hughes of Court watch.