Crazy Callers

Florida Man Pleads Guilty to Phone Threats to Insurer’s Employees

A 49-year-old Florida man pleaded guilty Friday to making hundreds of threatening calls to employees at the Travelers Insurance Co.

Brent Hansen of Seminole, Fla., entered guilty pleas in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Conn., to four federal harassment counts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Hansen was accused of making the calls and leaving more than 260 anonymous voicemails, most of them to two employees of the Hartford-based company, between March 2011 and June of this year.

Many of the messages accused the employees of being murderers, rapists and terrorists and often would include long periods of laughter and screaming, prosecutors said in court documents.

“The voicemails are hostile and consists of long tirades and rants, often for several minutes, in which the defendant states the victims are cursed and that God will damn their soles,” prosecutors wrote in a July memorandum that opposed a motion for Hansen’s release.

The FBI confronted Hansen in September 2011, and he agreed to stop the calls, but resumed making them a short time later, prosecutors said. He was arrested in July.

Hansen also was charged in 1992 with setting fire to the home of friend after an argument, but he fled to Canada before he could be taken into custody, prosecutors said. Those charges were dismissed in 2006 by prosecutors who were unfamiliar with the case because of its age, according to court documents.

Hansen faces two years in prison when he is sentenced on the harassment charges in October.

It was not clear from the court documents why Hansen targeted Travelers. A message seeking comment was left Friday afternoon for his attorney.