Oxnard man pleads guilty on Monday to making threatening calls to reproductive health centers
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The U. S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced that Nishith Tharaka Vandebona of Oxnard plead guilty on Monday to federal criminal charges after making threatening phone calls and bomb threats to multiple local healthcare providers.
Vandebona plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of threatened forcible intimidation regarding the obtaining and provision of reproductive health services under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act). He also plead guilty to one felony count of transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce.
He was remanded into federal custody following Monday's hearing.
According to his plea agreement, in both February and June of 2022, Vandebona used an internet application to create anonymous telephone numbers to make a series of threatening calls regarding the potential and eventual overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion formerly recognized in the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
On Jun. 24 of 2022, the Supreme Court published its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization which overturned the previous trimester-based abortion rights decision in Roe.
On the same day of the published Supreme Court decision, Vandebona admitted in his plea agreement that he left a threatening voicemail message containing death threats with Planned Parenthood California Central Coast, a Santa Barbara-based health services organization.
According to the plea agreement, Vandebona called Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and told a call center specialist, "I’m calling to let you know that I’m going to come in there and kill all of you, including your staff and your security. You got it? You’re overdue for an attack.”
Within an hour, Vandebona called Planned Parenthood Los Angeles again and made several additional death threats, detailed the plea agreement.
Prior to these threats, Vandebona admitted in his plea agreement that he had also made bomb threats to the office of Californians for Population Stabilization in February of 2022, a Ventura-based non-profit organization using anonymous numbers he got from the internet.
Vandebona is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on Oct. 2 of this year where he faces a maximum sentence of one year in federal prison for the violation of the FACE Act and up to five years in federal prison for transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce count.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) managed the investigation into these threats with assistance from local law enforcement including the Santa Barbara Police Department, the Santa Monica Police Department, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Office.
Assistant U. S. Attorneys Frances S. Lewis and Julius J. Nam of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section prosecuted these charges.
For more information about the U. S. Department of Justice's enforcement efforts through the FACE Act, visit their website on the subject here.
Anyone who has information about incidents of violence, threats, and obstruction that target a patient or provider of reproductive health services or damage and destruction of reproductive health facilities should report that information to the FBI at www.tips.fbi.gov.
