Tulsa Mayor’s Cyber-stalker Jailed
A 41-year-old man from Virginia who waged a cyber-harassment campaign against the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and his family has been sentenced to prison.
Norfolk resident Adam Maxwell Donn was charged in July 2020 with cyberstalking G.T. Bynum. Between June 11 and June 22, 2020, Donn barraged the mayor and his family with 14 threatening calls and 44 emails in the hope of intimidating Bynum into canceling a political rally scheduled to take place in Tulsa in June 2020.
Donn threatened to publish the home address of the Bynum family online along with personal information, including the children’s cell phone numbers and the passwords to their social media accounts. He said that he hoped doing so would cause a crowd to encroach on the Bynums’ home and cause the mayor and his family harm and emotional distress.
In an email dated June 19, Donn wrote to the mayor saying that he hoped that Bynum and his family contracted Covid-19 and suffered. He also threatened to show up to Bynum’s next bible-study group and asked the mayor’s wife when she would be home so he could come to her house and meet her.
A voicemail received by the mayor’s wife from Donn mentioned the street she lived on and asked if she still lived there “before his guys made a delivery.”
Court documents further stated that Donn masqueraded as the mayor’s wife and sent emails to her colleagues via her business website. In those emails, he stated that he was infected with Covid-19 and that he would show up at their office unless they sent the messages on to the mayor’s wife.
Despite Donn’s campaign of harassment, the political rally for former president Donald Trump went ahead as scheduled.
On October 21, Donn pleaded guilty to cyber-stalking. On January 25, US District Judge Claire Eagan sentenced Donn to 15 months in federal prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. She further ordered Donn to pay Tulsa’s mayor $2,380 in restitution.
“Words can and do lead to violence. That was the fear of the Bynum family as they received Adam Donn’s vile and violent threats to inflict harm upon them,” said US Attorney Trent Shores.
“This sentence sends a clear message that there are real life consequences in the form of federal prison time for anyone who wants to engage in cyberstalking.”
