Florida man unleashes months of racist threats after an NC bank locks his account
In July 2020, a fraud analyst with a North Carolina bank called Jalon Torres to tell him that his business account had been frozen for unauthorized activity, and that the bank would hold his money for at least 90 days.
The Florida man, according to an FBI affidavit, responded in an unusual way.
“How do you feel closing someone’s account given the current situation regarding COVID-19, protests and Black Lives Matter,” he said. “You must feel good about yourself, how do you sleep at night.”
Torres then asked for the Charlotte bank employee’s last name, which the FBI says she refused to give.
Torres found her anyway.
Within days of the phone call, Torres unleashed an eight-month barrage of racist, pornographic and life-threatening phone calls, emails and texts toward the bank employee, her husband and children, and her extended family, the FBI says.
“We’re coming for you dumb ass n------,” Torres said in a December 2020 voicemail. “We know where you live. We know you’re (sic) whole f------ family and you’re going to be dead. Just wait.”
On Tuesday, justice found Torres.
U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn sentenced the 43-year-old, Boynton Beach man to 27 months in prison after he pleaded guilty in October to cyberstalking and two counts of making interstate threats. His crimes carried a maximum combined sentence of five years. Torres has been held in the Mecklenburg County jail since May.
Defense attorney Katryna Spearman of Atlanta said Wednesday in an email to The Charlotte Observer that she had no comment. One of Torres’ parents said in a letter to Cogburn that Torres is bipolar.
The FBI affidavit does not name the Charlotte bank.
According to the Stalking Prevention, Awareness and Resource Center, known as SPARC, some 13.5 million Americans are targeted each year, including nearly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men. Victims, according to the center, are more than twice as likely to be harassed by technology.
Court documents in the Torres case illustrate the point. Based on one phone call in which he only received a partial name, Torres was able to track down personal information about the bank employee — identified in court documents as “Jane Doe” — her husband and her husband’s family. Some of Torres’ most disturbing threats came attached to family photographs or home addresses.
Racist messages and threats
The attacks began two weeks after Doe called Torres to tell him that his Charlotte bank account, under the name of “The Student Loan Resolution Center LLC,” had been locked.
On July 16, 2020, Torres sent a series of virulently racist text messages and images to Doe’s husband and several of his family members. He also called the husband’s sister and mother, saying that they would not survive the weekend.
“PICK UP THE PHONE N----- I GOT SOMETHING YOUR WANNA HEAR!,” Torres wrote the husband on July 16. A minute later, he sent a second text, with the couple’s home address.
In December 2020, a man later identified by the FBI as Torres left voicemails on the phones of Doe and her husband.
“You guys like to play f------ games, well game on f------ n------,” Torres said. He laughed, then added: “(Jane Doe) is dead.”
The bombardment, for long stretches at a time, was incessant. According to the FBI, Torres sent about 210 messages alone to Doe’s husband from mid-July to mid-December 2020. At one point, the Charlotte family hired off-duty police officers to guard their home.
Weeks before his arrest — and more than seven months after the initial phone call — Torres’ barrage continued.
“SOMEBODY BETTER TELL (Jane Doe) SHE BETTER QUIT WHILE SHE IS A HEAD,” he wrote in a February 2021 text to the bank employee’s sister. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE F------ WITH ... YOU’VE ALL BEEN WARNED N------!!”
The texts and phone calls came from multiple numbers, including the one he used during his first conversation with Doe. Torres was arrested in March 2021 in Colorado.
Torres’ criminal record shows multiple arrests for mostly drugs and driving but also for stalking and false imprisonment. He appears to have served at least one jail sentence — a 10-day incarceration for a misdemeanor 1997 theft conviction in Harris County (Houston), Texas.
In letters to Cogburn asking for leniency, Torres’ parents described a promising but troubled man whose life had been thrown off line at an early age after he discovered the body of his 15-month-old sister, whom, they say, had been murdered by her baby-sitter.
“He became very angry and short tempered which has caused him to make bad decisions,” his mother said in her letter. “But I remain convinced that he possesses the desire and determination to learn from the experience of being incarcerated and that he will move in a positive direction with his life.”
Torres’ next move will be to a federal prison.
Observer staff wrier Gavin Off contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 6:30 AM.
