A financial analyst from Chicago has been hit with federal charges alleging he threatened on social media to “shoot up a synagogue” and posted the purported U.S. addresses of relatives of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Timothy Holmes, 31, of the 500 block of North McClurg Court, was charged in a criminal complaint made public in U.S. District Court with making a threat in interstate commerce to injure a person.
He was arrested last week while on a personal trip to Florida and appeared in court there on Wednesday, when a judge ordered him released on a $100,000 bond over the objection of prosecutors. An initial court date in Chicago had not yet been scheduled, and it was unclear as of Monday if he’d hired an attorney.
According to the complaint, Holmes, using his account @MapleStCapital, posted on the social media site X on March 3, “I’m going to shoot up a synagogue.”
The public statement was in response to a post from the Israeli government’s official X account concerning the death of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S. missile strike at the outset of the Trump administration’s war on Iran.
The next day, FBI agents went to Holmes’ condo on the 43rd floor of a high-rise building on McClurg Court and left a contact card, according to the complaint. His partner later called the FBI and told agents he was not home.
Meanwhile, further investigation revealed Holmes had made other recent threats on his X account, including one that said “from the river to the sea every Jew will die,” according to the complaint.
He also posted photos of Netanyahu’s relatives, who live in Florida, and an address he believed could be theirs, saying he was flying to Florida and wanted to know where they lived “just out of curiosity,” the complaint stated.
Public records and online information show Holmes is a DePaul University graduate and works as an analyst for a Chicago-based financial adviser. There were no allegations in the complaint that Holmes was actually plotting any violence.
Holmes flew to Florida on March 7 and was supposed to return on Tuesday, the complaint stated. A lawyer who represented him in Florida told the judge the purpose of the trip was to care for a sick relative.
