Home Depot Bomb Plot - A 52-year-old former Home Depot employee who sought to extort $2 million from the retailer has been sentenced to 30 years in and one month in prison.
Daniel Sheehan of Long Island was sentenced on Saturday for planting pipes bombs at the retailer's Huntington store and threatening to detonate three other bombs at other stores on Thanksgiving Day IN 2012.
According to his trial attorney Leonard Late, Sheehan's actions forced the company to close its stores on Black Friday - one of the busiest shopping days in the U.S.
Sheehan reportedly sent an anonymous letter to the Home Depot Huntington branch to inform them about the bomb, which he had installed in the store's lighting department.
Sheehan requested that the retailer pays him $2 million or all bombs would go off.
Suffolk County police bomb experts located the pipe bomb placed inside a light fixture. They detonated it afterwards.
Reports indicate that Sheehan was arrested in November 2012 following an investigation that identified his handwriting.
He had been facing a mandatory 30-year sentence after he was convicted in 2013. But prosecutors offered him a plea deal which would have seen him serving 12-years in prison. However, he turned the deal down, deciding to go to trial because he argued that the bomb had no trigger and did not hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley said Sheehan's crime was frightening, adding that later he would determine how much Sheehan's actions cost the retailer.
Prosecutors say the retailer spent about $1.5 million on the bomb plot - this went to beefing up security, bomb-sniffing dogs and other protective measures.
Reports indicate that Sheehan was not happy with his employers because his hours were cut.
