Bomb Threat Suspect, Named Michael Kaydar, Used Bitcoin, Google Voice

Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — The Israeli-American suspected of perpetrating more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish institutions used technologies including Google Voice, a call forwarding service, and Bitcoin, a digital currency, to make the threats.
According to an article in The Daily Beast, the 19-year-old suspect’s name is Michael Kaydar. Israel’s anti-fraud squad arrested Kaydar at his home in southern Israel and searched the premises on Thursday. He also is accused of a series of threats made in Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the past six months, according to reports in Israel. He also is reported to have called in threats to the Israel Police two months ago regarding Israeli educational institutions.
To mask his identity, Kaydar used a technology called SpoofCard that masks a number’s caller ID, according to the Daily Beast. When police subpoenaed SpoofCard’s parent company to trace the call’s real number, they learned that he had called from a disposable Google Voice number.
He paid for SpoofCard through Bitcoin, also untraceable, and routed his internet through proxies, making his IP address untraceable as well. In addition, Kaydar masked his voice in the calls to sound like a woman.
Kaydar was caught after he forgot to trace his internet connection through a proxy server, allowing police to trace his IP address, which led to his home.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Honey, he’s had enough of you’: Trump’s Middle East moves increasingly appear to sideline Israel
-
Fast Forward Yeshiva University rescinds approval for LGBTQ+ student club
-
Fast Forward Rumeysa Ozturk ordered free on bail, after judge says op-ed criticizing Israel is insufficient to justify detention
-
Culture Everything you need to know about every Pope Leo — even the antisemitic Leo and the one with the elephant
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.