FL Man Threatened To Blow Up New York Stock Exchange: U.S. DOJ

CORAL SPRINGS, FL — A South Florida man was arrested for threatening to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, 30, of Coral Springs, was charged with attempt to use an explosive device to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce.

The FBI began investigating Yener in February after receiving a tip that he was storing “bombmaking schematics” in a storage unit, the DOJ said.

Agents found bombmaking sketches, multiple watches with timers, electronic circuit boards and other electronics that could be used to build explosive devices in the storage unit.

Yener also searched online for information about bombmaking starting in 2017.

He told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to join an anti-government militia and planned to set off a bomb in New York City during the week before Thanksgiving, the DOJ said.

“The Stock Exchange, we want to hit that, because it will wake people up,” he told undercover FBI agents, according to court documents.

Yener also told the undercover agents that he wanted to “reboot” or “reset” the U.S. government.

He built a remote trigger for the explosive device and researched where to plant the bomb. He asked undercover FBI employees to create the explosive element for the device, surveil the New York Stock Exchange and take photos of the building so he could decide where to detonate the bomb.

Yener planned to wear a disguise when planting the explosive device outside the NYSE and recorded a message to be delivered to the press about his reasons for the attack.

He hoped the impact of the explosion would be “like a small nuke went off” and that “[a]nything outside” the building “will be wiped out” and “anything inside there would be killed,” the DOJ said.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.