Russian Domain commonality in TCI, Caribbean and India bomb threat hoaxes

Airports in five different British Overseas Territories, on Monday, shut down following a series of bomb hoaxes issued over 24 hours in what could be a wider hoax ring affecting schools and airports across India and the Caribbean, connected by their origin point, emails coming from a Russian domain.

It was mostly airports that were affected with the exception of the Ona Glinton Primary in Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos, which received a bomb threat before midday Monday, May 6, and quickly evacuated its students. That email, leveling threats at children, is an escalation of a series of airport threats issued in the hours and days prior.

Affected were Anguilla, Bermuda, The British Virgin Islands, Cayman and the Turks and Caicos Islands which are allo British Overseas territories and which all received the “credible threat” emailed between 4 p.m. Sunday May 5th and 11:30 a.m. Monday May 6th.

In a press release at 11:30 a.m. Monday, the Government of Anguilla revealed that a bomb threat had been made against the Clayton J. Lloyd International Airport. Cayman Police also received an email from  melin.vika@mail.ru early Monday, threatening the national carrier Cayman Airways Limited which they determined was a hoax, there were no reports of any shutdowns in Cayman.

The night before, Sunday, May 5th,  the Bermuda Police Service alerted the Public to an emergency at 8:35 p.m. that turned out to be a bomb threat that delayed a British Airways Flight and diverted an American Airways Flight. Just hours earlier, around 6 pm Magnetic Media reporters received reports of a bomb threat at both the JAGS McCartney International Airport in Grand Turk and the Providenciales International Airport in Providenciales. When we arrived on the scene the airport was being evacuated and planes emptied of people as the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force (RTCIPF) checked for explosives.

That followed a 4 p.m. scare clocked by The Royal Virgin Islands Police Force about a potential bomb threat at Terrance B. International Airport in the British Virgin Islands.

The threats were made by email according to authorities across the various OTs and while most of the countries were new to the menacing communication, the Turks and Caicos has been experiencing the email hoaxes since Friday, April 26 with a total of seven so far.

All of them were made against various airports except the Ona Glinton Primary threat on Monday, that same day thousands of miles away over 40 schools in Ahmedabad India received emails from an address labeled tauheedl@mail.ru which, while different from the one identified in Cayman ended in the same mail.ru that Indian Officials identify as a Russian server; though officials say the server would have easily been masked using a VPN and may not necessarily originate in Russia.

Like the TCI, India has been struggling with the emails for over a week with over 100 schools having been affected in different areas of the country, especially Delhi since May 1.

All the threats have so far turned out to be hoaxes.

Officials are urging calm across the region as they investigate.