After allegedly threatening a woman for months using multiple Facebook accounts — including by calling for the extermination of Hispanics and repeatedly threatening rape and murder — a man was arrested Friday in Seattle, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Eric Lin, 35, was charged with interstate transmission of threatening communications. According to the criminal complaint against him, Lin targeted an unnamed victim who lives in Florida but is from Spain with threatening Facebook messages, repeatedly indicating he identified with Hitler’s views. He also referenced the President.
“Our Great President Donald John Trump is too Nice of Man. But I will say it,” Lin allegedly wrote on July 15 to his victim, before unleashing a series of racial slurs and saying that Hispanic, black and Muslim Americans “will be Killed!”
“I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President and that he will launch a Racial War and Crusade to keep [various slurs] and any dangerous non-White or Ethnically or Cultural Foreign group ‘In Line,’” he allegedly wrote a few days later.
By “in line,” Lin allegedly continued, “it is meant they will either be sent to ‘Concentration Camps’ or dealt with Ruthlessly and Vigorously by the United States Military.”
Court records indicate that a public defender was appointed for Lin on Monday, but that he had not entered a plea yet. Jail records show Lin in custody at the federal detention center next to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Per an FBI agent’s affidavit in the criminal complaint, the messages to Lin’s victim continued up until days before Lin’s arrest. Ultimately, the court filing said, investigators obtained a search warrant and went through the Facebook accounts associated with Lin.
That search revealed that in July, Lin allegedly contacted someone on Facebook and offered them $10,000 to “go to Miami and beat up this Spic who insulted me.” A couple days later, he allegedly messaged the person again, this time offering $25,000 for a more ambitious plan — kidnap the woman and drive her cross country to Seattle.
“Nothing will happen to you if you get the Right lawyers,” he allegedly said. “She’s a Spic who Hates White Americans…I doubt the FBI would care much about her.”
He added later, per the complaint: “I don’t care if I have to Pay you a Million Dollars or More I want this Done!”
When the victim went to authorities, the complaint said, she noted that she knew a man named Eric Lin who frequented the restaurant where she worked in Miami-Dade county, and that that customer had made statements to her that were similar to Lin’s alleged messages, including ones that discussed mass shootings and “idolization of Adolf Hitler.”
In one specific example, the victim said she believed a filtered photo that Lin had shown her in person at the restaurant matched one that she received from an account threatening her on Facebook. The complaint described it as a photo of Lin with a Hitler “filter” over his face.
“Composite of My Face with the Führer and Reichskanzler Deutscheland,” Lin allegedly wrote.
Read the complaint against Lin below:
