Houlton Man Pleads Guilty to Making Email Threats [UPDATED]

A Houlton resident who was arrested earlier this year for allegedly threatening to harm a foreign official pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Thirty-eight-year-old Dushko Venelinov Vulchev of Houlton–originally from Bulgaria–pleaded guilty to making the email threat, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II.

Court records state that on February 5, the defendant sent an email from his home in Houlton to a Bulgarian Vice-President of the European Commission, and others at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. In the email, Vulchev threatened to physically harm the officials if his demands were not met. The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union.

The investigation into the threatening emails began on Feb. 5 after the victim and others received them. The precise meaning of the text, which was written in Bulgarian, was called into question during the investigation. Originally, a word translated as "kill" was later determined to mean "beat."

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Houlton Police Department. The FBI purportedly traced the emails to Vulchev, who had used a neighbor’s wireless Internet connection.

Vulchev has been detained since his arrest on March 29. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Nivison sentenced him to time already served.