Trial starting for man accused of threats

A Long Island man who is accused of threatening the lives of more than 40 financial regulators is scheduled to go on trial Monday in federal court in Central Islip.

Vincent McCrudden, 50, who has lived in Long Beach and Dix Hills, is accused of two counts of transmission of threats to injure.

One count alleges that McCrudden posted an "execution list" online of more than 40 financial regulators and offered rewards of up to $100,000 for personal information on their whereabouts and "proof of punishment against these criminals."

McCrudden, who once operated two financial firms in Dix Hills, also said on the site that the regulators used "corrupt and biased processes that favor big business and punish the small guy . . . This has got to stop and stop now . . . Go buy a gun, and lets [sic] get to work in taking back our country from these criminals."

The second count accuses McCrudden, while at a Singapore hotel, of sending an email, ostensibly from the chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation, Gary Gensler, to another regulator stating: "It wasn't a question of 'if' I was going to kill you, it was just a question of when . . . You are going to die a painful death."

The regulator had been dealing with McCrudden, authorities said.

Both a federal magistrate and a judge have considered McCrudden a danger to the community and have ordered him held without bail since the FBI arrested him in January.

McCrudden's attorney, Bruce Barket, of Garden City, maintains that his client is innocent.

Barket said last week at a pretrial hearing that McCrudden never intended to harm anyone when he made his Web postings and said he was engaging in political commentary, a sort of crusade against what he saw as corruption among financial regulators.

Barket said afterward that he would hope that the officials McCrudden named were not really threatened but "subtle" enough to realize that McCrudden had no intention of actually having them harmed.

As to the email sent from the Singapore hotel, Barket says there are any number of people who could have sent it and there is no proof that his client did so.

Barket, who says he is a longtime friend of McCrudden's, says his client is competent and they have not considered some form of insanity defense.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Christopher Caffarone and James McMahon declined to comment.

In 2003, McCrudden was tried on federal fraud charges and acquitted.

In 2010, he was fined tens of thousands of dollars for threatening employees at a hedge fund, Caffarone has said.

Shortly before McCrudden wrote the statements now being charged as threats, prosecutors say the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation brought a civil enforcement action against McCrudden, saying he operated an unlicensed investment pool.

Several of McCrudden's seven brothers and sisters have regularly attended pretrial hearings, and said all seven plan to attend the trial. In a joint statement, the siblings said, "Vincent is not now nor has he ever been a threat to anyone . . . We are sure he is embarrassed about his language, as we all are, but he is not guilty of any wrongdoing."