Radio hacker avoids prison over Gurnee Mills bomb threat
A Waukegan man was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of periodic imprisonment after admitting he hacked into security guard radios used at Gurnee Mills shopping center and threaten to detonate a bomb there.
Raymond Kelly, 25, of the 4800 block of Eastwood Drive, also will serve 30 months probation after pleading guilty to a charge of tampering with security, fire and life systems.
Lake County prosecutor Ben Dillon said Kelly's periodic imprisonment will be postponed while he goes through an inpatient substance abuse program in Rockford. If he completes the program, Kelly will be able to bypass periodic imprisonment altogether and instead be placed on electronic home monitoring.
“This is the first time he has been sentenced to felony probation,” Dillon said when asked why Kelly was not sentenced to prison. “He received the maximum probation allowed and the maximum sentence for periodic imprisonment.”
Kelly had faced up to five years in prison if found guilty of the felony charge after a trial. He received 79 days credit for time served in Lake County jail, and a charge of issuing a false bomb threat was dropped as part of the plea deal.
The charge against him alleged he tapped into a radio system used by security officers at the Gurnee mall Jan. 2, then used the signal to threaten that he would detonate a bomb planted near the Macy's department store, authorities said. The threat was later determined to be a hoax.
Police were able to trace the hijacked signal to Kelly's address, where various portable radios, a laptop and an antenna were found, authorities said. Police believe Kelly tapped into the same radio signal more than 60 times since 2012 to transmit racial slurs or interfere with transmissions at Gurnee Mills.
Dillon said Kelly also hacked into radios used by security guards at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee.
Under the terms of his plea deal, Kelly must perform 200 hours of community service, is not allowed to be in possession of radio equipment, and must stay away from Gurnee Mills and Great America.
His mother, Cheryl Kelly, said her son is a genius when it comes to using radio equipment. However, she said, he continues to make the “same mistake over and over again.”
“I hope this will help straighten him out,” she added.
Kelly previously was sentenced to 120 days in jail after pleading guilty to tampering with communication devices used by officers at the Lake County jail. In that case, he was able to reprogram frequencies on the jail radios in order to transmit racial slurs over a two-day span in 2013, authorities said.