A Kensington man was arrested on Monday and charged with mailing “numerous” threatening communications to Jewish organizations in several states including in the Washington, D.C., area, since March 2024, according to a press release.
Clift “Andy” Seferlis admitted to the FBI on Monday that he had sent “at least three dozen letters or postcards to Jewish organizations across the Northeast over the last several months,” federal authorities said in a criminal complaint.
In his letters, Seferlis, 55, referenced Israel, Gaza and events in which Jewish people were killed or otherwise attacked, prosecutors said. The letters suggested that similar acts of violence would occur at the unnamed Jewish institutions.
“Over the past 18 months, nearly every Jewish institution in the Greater Washington area, along with many others along the East Coast,” has received these letters, according to a statement by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s security arm JShield.
Written on a typewriter, many of Seferlis’ letters contained newspaper clippings of articles about the war in Israel and Gaza. Some included references to Kristallnacht, the 1938 antisemitic attacks across Nazi Germany and parts of Austria, prosecutors said.
In one letter sent in May to a Philadelphia-based Jewish institution, Seferlis wrote, “The hatred toward you all, your [institution], and especially the nation of Israel is at an all time high and is only getting worse.” He asked the institution’s staff if they really care “about what is going on in Gaza,” and inquired if it would take “something happening” to their “beloved” institution to “make that happen.”
The same institution received several additional messages, totaling about seven since April 1, 2024, including a threat to physically destroy the institution, prosecutors said.
Other threatening letters to the institution and its employees, thought to be sent by Seferlis, referenced the institution’s “many big open windows,” Kristallnacht, “anger and rage” and a future need to “rebuild” the institution after its destruction.
Seferlis was arrested on June 16 in Maryland and had his initial court appearance on the morning of June 18 in Philadelphia, where his case will be prosecuted, according to the press release. As of the evening of June 17, he did not have an attorney listed in court documents.
Prosecutors added that Seferlis — a self-described tour guide — told the FBI that he had led tours of the institution in the past and had been planning to do so again later this week.
JShield responded to these “ominous threats” by disseminating multiple communications and conducting training sessions on this issue, according to the JShield statement.
