Maybe you’ve been following the loony-tunes saga of DLANC Board member Joshua Albrektson and how he can’t follow the freaking law to save his life. Well, it gets weirder, friends. The other day, this self-proclaimed radiologist sent me this exceedingly bizarre email, threatening me with some kind of exposure if I didn’t stop blogging and making CPRA requests:

From:Josh Albrektson <joshraymd@gmail.com>
To:■■■■■■■■■
Subject:Just wanted to give you a warning
Date:Friday, November 17, 2017 7:02 AM

As for me, I don’t appreciate the accusations you have done against me and some of my friends. So this is just my personal warning to you. Every time you publish an article, any article, from this second forward someone you wouldn’t want reading your work will find out what you are writing about. It could end right now with you and ■■■■ being the only people at ■■■■■■■■ who know about your articles. Or not. Your choice.

Leave aside the surreal assumption that there are people I “wouldn’t want reading” work that I myself consciously publish on the open Internet, what do we have here but a thuggish attempt, however misguided, to intimidate me into not writing about Joshua Albrektson’s friends by threatening to, I don’t know, destroy my reputation?

I don’t know what you would do, but I turned the guy in to the FBI for violating 18 U.S.C. §875(d), which criminalizes this kind of conduct for reasons that you can read about in detail after the break!

So here’s what 18 USC §;875(d) actually prohibits:

Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Let’s take the elements one at a time. It’s extremely useful to refer to the pattern jury instructions at the same time:

1. Whoever, with intent to extort from any person … any … thing of value … — My first thought is that a thing of value ought to be money or something similar, but it turns out that according to the jury instructions, ‘A “thing of value” is anything that has value to the Defendant, whether it’s tangible or not.’ Obviously Joshua Albrektson finds some value in my ceasing my writing and CPRA requesting, otherwise why is he so flipped out about it? Thus he’s trying to extort a thing of value. Check.
2. … transmits in interstate … commerce any communication … — Well, clearly an email is a communication. The jury instructions say that ‘To transmit something in “interstate commerce” means to send it from a place in one state to a place in another state.’ Joshua Albrektson and I are both in California, but it turns out that with email that’s not so important. According to the May 2016 issue of the U.S. Attorneys’ Bulletin, published by the Department of Justice, “Because the Internet is a means of interstate commerce, threats sent online may be federally prosecuted.”¹
3. … containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee … — I mean, it’s hard to see what other than threats to my reputation his assertions might be: “I would think very hard about the next time you send a public request” or “[e]very time you publish an article, any article, from this second forward someone you wouldn’t want reading your work will find out what you are writing about.”

So that’s the evidence for Joshua Albrektson’s violation of 18 USC §;875(d), all laid out for you so you can judge his guilt for yourself! More news when I have it, although to be honest I’m not expecting much.

Image of self-proclaimed radiologist Joshua Albrektson and his little dog too is ©2017 MichaelKohlhaas.Org and is based on this narcissistic slab of bodily fluids right here.

1. See page 4.