A disgraced reporter was busted Friday for unleashing a campaign of terror against Jewish centers in the Big Apple and across the country — all to get back at the girlfriend in Brooklyn who kicked him to the curb, authorities said.
Spurned beau Juan Thompson, 31, of Missouri was arrested in his home city of St. Louis and slapped with cyberstalking charges after a months-long crusade of bomb threats, the feds said.
Thompson — a former online investigative reporter for The Intercept who got the boot there for creating fake news — is accused of making at least eight threatening calls to Jewish Community Centers in Manhattan, Dallas, Michigan and San Diego.
He also sent an e-mail warning of an upcoming “Jewish Newtown’’ — masquerading as his 32-year-old former gal pal when he sent it to try to get her in trouble for supposedly lying about him, officials said.
Authorities said they believe Thompson got the idea to target Jewish organizations simply after seeing news reports of scores of other anti-Semitic threats called in since the beginning of the year.
Ian D’Emilia, Thompson’s former roommate at Vassar College, told The Post that he was surprised the suspect had targeted Jewish people.
“He was dating a Jewish girl at Vassar,’’ said D’Emilia, 26, of Haddonfield, NJ. That woman was not the Brooklyn girlfriend who jilted him.
D’Emilia added, “we both had senses of humor that were sometimes off-color. He said it was good that he was dating [the girl] because he needed to date a white woman and she was Jewish and her family had money. But I took those comments in the spirit of he was joking around.”
Thompson briefly appeared in court Friday afternoon wearing khakis, boots and a button-down blue shirt. He was shackled at the wrists and ankles, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The former reporter had been fired from The Intercept in January 2016 and then got his walking papers from his Brooklyn girlfriend in July.
The day after she broke up with him, Thompson allegedly began terrorizing her, spewing hate-fueled e-mails and faxes to her employer accusing her of drunken driving and spreading STDs.
He sent her naked photos of herself and threatened to make them public, authorities said.
He anonymously contacted a national children’s welfare organization, lying that she had kiddie porn on her phone, the feds said.
When NYPD detectives later spoke to Thompson on Nov. 22 about the accusations, he reportedly claimed to have been hacked.
On Feb. 7, Thompson sent an e-mail from an anonymous account to a Manhattan JCC — using his own name and birthdate in the attempt to trick authorities into thinking his ex was trying to frame him, according to a federal criminal complaint filed by the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
“Juan Thompson [birthday] put two bombs in the office of the Jewish center today,” the e-mail allegedly read.
“He wants to create Jewish newtown tomorrow,” it said, referring to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.
Thompson made a similar bomb threat to the Jewish History Museum in Manhattan, authorities said.
Thompson also most recently sent an e-mail from an anonymous account to the Anti-Defamation League’s nation office in Midtown Manhattan last month, saying his girlfriend was behind the bomb threats, officials said.
“She lives in nyc and is making more bomb threats tomorrow,” the e-mail read.
Thompson’s hate spree allegedly made it across the country.
On Feb. 20, a JCC in San Diego received an e-mail claiming that the disgraced journalist’s ex had planted a bomb inside the building in hopes of killing “as many Jews asap,” the Dispatch reported.
Weeks earlier, a Jewish school in Farmington Hills, Mich., got a call from Thompson saying he had placed two bombs somewhere inside, officials said.
But as late as last week, Thompson, who is black, was still claiming that it was all his white girlfriend’s evil handiwork, authorities said.
He allegedly seethed on Twitter that his ex “seemed like a cool Brooklyn white radical. There [were] warning signs though.
“She didn’t tell me she had herpes until AFTER we hooked up . . . and she called herself captain save-a-thug — a reference to the type of black men she dated.”
At one point, he allegedly posted her name, photo, telephone number and home address online.
She works for a Manhattan non-profit.
Thompson’s next court appearance is set for Wednesday. The judge is expected to decide if he will be transferred to New York to face charges.
D’Emilia, his former roommate, described Thompson as charismatic, intelligent and funny — although also an oddball. For example, he said Thompson wouldn’t tell anyone his age.
After Thompson’s fraudulent reporting was spotlighted in an in-depth piece by Riverfront Times reporter Doyle Murphy in February 2016, two local reporters received an anonymous e-mail from someone claiming that Murphy had committed a crime against her. No evidence was ever found to support the claim.
Additional reporting by Khristina Narizhnaya