Man sentenced for sending 12,000 threatening calls to Congressional offices

A New Yorker who sent thousands of threatening phone calls to members of Congress was sentenced to prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors said.

Ade Salim Lilly, of Queens, was sentenced Tuesday to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release, prosecutors in Washington, D.C. said in a news release.

Authorities said Lilly threatened to kill a Congressional staffer and unleashed a "campaign of pervasive harassing communications" against lawmakers.

Lilly pleaded guilty May 30 to interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure and repeated telephone calls.

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Court documents showed Lilly made 12,000 calls for about 21 months beginning in February 2022 to about 54 offices in Congress across the country, both in district offices and offices in the nation's capital. Of those, about half were to offices in Washington, D.C.

Most of the calls were answered by staffers or interns, and in some of them, Lilly became enraged, using vulgar and harassing language, authorities said. Lilly tried to disguise his calls and at one point threatened to kill or harm one of the people who answered.

"I will kill you, I am going to run you over, I will kill you with a bomb or grenade," he told the employee.