Law enforcement struggles to hunt down caller behind JCC threats

US law enforcement officials reportedly believe bomb threats targeting Jewish institutions across the country are being made by a single person, possibly abroad, using “spoofing” technology.

On Monday, 29 Jewish institutes were evacuated after receiving phone calls threatening that explosives had been placed within the buildings, in the fifth wave of such threats since the beginning of the year.

Federal investigators are coordinating with local police forces in an attempt to trace those behind the threats.

They believe that the callers used spoofing technology, which makes a call appear to come from another source, making it more difficult to trace, Buzzfeed reported Wednesday.

FBI officials relayed this initial conclusion to Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, which advises Jewish organizations.

Goldenberg told Buzzfeed that those behind the threats “are leveraging technologies that have made the investigation more challenging.”

On Monday, CBS cited a law enforcement official who said that the threats appeared to be coordinated. He also said that the calls were received from both within the US and from abroad.

On Tuesday, The New York Times quoted a federal law enforcement official who said that a single person using an internet calling service may be behind the threats. The newspaper said many analysts and researchers share that theory.

The calls are apparently made using voice-masking technology that protects the caller’s identity, as heard in a recording of a threat obtained by JTA.

According to The New York Times, in one case near Milwaukee, an operator asked the caller questions and received responses, indicating at least some of the calls are not recorded.

No actual bombs have been found at any of the dozens of institutions that have received bomb threats in recent weeks.

“The goal of these people is to wear us down,” Goldenberg said. “But we are back in our schools, we are back in our JCCs.”

Goldenberg said the Jewish institutions are “behaving in an exemplary manner” in the wake of the threats.

“Our Jewish schools and our JCCs continue to train for this, continue to execute well-placed measures,” he said, going on to praise the staffs of US Jewish institutions as “vigilant.”

In his long-awaited speech to both Houses of Congress on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said the recurrent bomb threats to Jewish institutions and desecration of Jewish cemeteries were a reminder “of our nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that remains.”

“Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms,” said Trump, who was noticeably more subdued and conciliatory than during his previous speeches and press conferences.