FBI arrests man after ‘high-level’ UT employees receive threats

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports the FBI has arrested a Nevada man accused of cyberstalking and threatening two “high-level” University of Texas employees. In addition to cyberstalking, Brian Solomon, who was arrested Sept. 16, is facing a charge of interstate communication with threat to injure. According to an affidavit, first reported by KXAN, a UT employee related to or involved in athletics received thousands of “persistent threatening communications” via Instagram direct messages from the Nevada man, who used multiple accounts to target the employee. The pervasive threats contained profanity, threatened violence against the employee and their family, and included requests for money to travel to their location. The threats against the second UT employee involved sexual violence, the affidavit states.

The threats then escalated to attempts to confront the first employee in person. When the Nevada man said he would be at an event that the employee was publicly stated to be at, the employee, who was unnamed in the court document, “paid out of pocket to hire security,” the affidavit states. The man also threatened to fly to Austin multiple times to hurt the first employee, and he was arrested in the city on charges of stealing a vehicle and “criminal mischief” in late July, about 8 miles from the victim’s house, police told the employee, according to the affidavit. The nature of the first employee’s public schedule caused intense fear, the affidavit said, causing them to change homes and install security cameras. The affidavit states that the Nevada man said he sent “a few thousand” messages to the first victim because he was mad, but also he believed he was “to be married (to the employee) and that he was the second coming of Christ.”