Anthrax hoax When police clerk Clarice Gaspar received a typed envelope at the Pearl City Police Station last November, she opened the back flap, tore into the rest of the envelope and a powdery substance blew onto her face and hands.
defendant
pleads guilty
By Debra Barayuga
dbarayuga@starbulletin.comShe froze.
On the mainland, deaths had been reported that were linked to anthrax following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the U.S. Postal Service and the law enforcement community were on high alert.
"My throat got itchy, and I was afraid for myself and the people in my office," Gaspar wrote in a police report. "I started getting dizzy but thought that it was because I could feel the terror creeping up."
Gaspar was among the more than a dozen victims of a hoax apparently concocted by a Kalihi woman who allegedly had a long-standing dispute with her boyfriend's mother, Caridad Berzamina.
Sharon Cardenas, 24, pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court to mailing threatening letters and threatening to use the deadly anthrax.
She is the first to be convicted in Hawaii under a federal statute for threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Cardenas told U.S. Magistrate Leslie Kobayashi that she sent the letters because of "family issues" and because she wanted to cause problems for her boyfriend's mother.
Cardenas' attorney, Randall Oyama, said outside the courtroom that she agreed to plead guilty because she wanted to take responsibility for her actions.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said hers was not an isolated case where someone sends a letter containing anthrax as some kind of small-time hoax or joke.
"This was a concerted ongoing scheme to victimize and frame one particular individual for an extremely serious crime," he said. But in doing so, Cardenas victimized so many more people.
Because of numerous letters like hers and others that turned out to be false alarms, private and government buildings were shut down, including the Pearl City, Kalihi and main police station on Beretania Street, and the Honolulu Fire Department's hazardous-materials team was summoned.
Instead of anthrax, Cardenas' letters contained a mixture of talcum powder, rat poison and fish food granules, Sorenson said.
Nevertheless, "Many people who opened these letters and were met with a puff of white powder on their face felt legitimately terrorized and afraid and suffered a lot of uncertainty," Sorenson said. "This defendant, by her conduct, struck fear into the hearts of so many people."
Cardenas, who had trained to be a medical assistant, apparently got the idea to use an anthrax threat after seeing a documentary on TV, said postal inspector Byron Dare.
She mailed out the first batch of letters between April and August 2000 -- even before the anthrax scare surfaced on the mainland -- to individuals who had some standing or financial means in the Filipino community, Sorenson said. The letters contained death threats and demanded about $200,000 each.
"I will do anything to get money, even hurt people," she wrote.
Cardenas began mailing out the second batch in November 2001 to three establishments, including the Waikiki Beach Marriott, where Berzamina worked as a housekeeper.
"If you fire me or when I get arrested, I will make sure that you all will die and be destroyed. ... I will create my own terorism [sic]," she wrote.
Pretending to be Berzamina, Cardenas also sent a letter to Dynamic Island Terminix, where Berzamina's son worked, and demanded that he allow her to see her granddaughter. Cardenas had apparently prevented Berzamina in the past from having contact with her granddaughter.
In the letters to police, Cardenas pretended to be Berzamina and demanded that they destroy all records relating to their investigation into the threatening letters that were mailed out in 2000. She threatened to have someone bomb each police station and make sure everyone died. She also called police "stupid and ignorant."
"Only barbecue and give traffic tickets that is all you good for," she wrote to a Detective James Anderson at the main police station. "This was going on almost two years and you never figure out that I am the person. It goes to show that you are not doing your job and not serious," she wrote.
Cardenas also had a letter sent to herself containing a powdery substance and later used it as a basis to obtain a restraining order against Berzamina in November.
Berzamina was "deeply affected" by Cardenas' conduct and the glare of accusations and suspicion surrounding her, Sorenson said.
Because the letters were signed in her name, Berzamina became the subject of a large-scale investigation, was polygraphed and questioned over and over again. Although Berzamina was suspended from her job at the hotel, she has since returned to work, Sorenson said.
Cardenas faces a maximum 20 years' imprisonment for mailing the threatening letters and a life term for threatening to use anthrax when sentenced Jan. 27.
