It's a fax or a printed letter that folks on the receiving end have no choice but to take seriously.
The fax reads:
"Good morning. I'll be brief. I've installed several explosives in the building. If you do not send in $25,000 by May 31, I will blow up this whole block."
It appeared on the printer of a Medical Office in Fairview Park on May 27, essentially shutting them and every other office in the Westgate Professional Centre building down.
"We take these threats very seriously, we don't want to ignore it," said Fairview Park Lieutentant Paul Shepard. "We evacuated the building and searched the building with our partners Cleveland police who sent a bomb dog out."
But nothing was found after hours of searching.
"No bomb. No explosive or suspicious package...all in all, just on our end, probably 100 people were inconvenienced," Shepard said.
The same letter was faxed to a small business in Mentor. Mentor police searched and found nothing.
News 5 checked in with the FBI, who is investigating similar letters distributed across the country, an agent in the Cleveland office released this statement:
“We are aware of recent bomb threats and we remain in touch with our law enforcement partners to provide assistance if needed. As always, we encourage the public to remain vigilant and to promptly report suspicious activities which could represent a threat to public safety.”
Police said, while false alarms like this do affect public safety, they will always respond and they will always investigate.
According to law enforcement and the National Explosives Task Force, it's possible thousands of these threats were send out, to retaliate against the sender, but they're still investigating.
"On the heels of what happened in England, people are very antsy so to have a bomb threat called in, that's serious," Lieutenant Paul Shepard told News 5.
