Winchester Man Convicted by Federal Jury for Threatening Government of Singapore

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A federal jury has found Mikhy Farrera-Brochez, a 34 year old man originally from Winchester, Kentucky, guilty of two counts of sending threatening communications to the Government of Singapore and its Ministry of Health. The jury also found Farrera-Brochez guilty of one count of possessing and transferring the means of identity of other people in interstate and foreign commerce with the intent to commit, or in connection with, another crime. The jury convicted Farrera-Brochez on Tuesday, June 4, 2019, following a 2-day trial in U.S. District Court.

According to trial testimony, Farrera-Brochez obtained access to a database belonging to the Singaporean Ministry of Health that listed the private identifying and medical information of thousands of people in Singapore living with HIV, including more than 50 U.S. citizens. He sent the database to his mother in Kentucky, and retrieved it when he returned to Kentucky in 2018. On January 22, 2019, Farrera-Brochez sent an email to several officials of the Government of Singapore that included three links to places on the internet where he had put copies of the database. He made several demands in that email. On February 18, 2019, he sent a second email to officials of the Government of Singapore threatening to publish the database if his demands were not met.

Farrera-Brochez is scheduled to be sentenced on September 27, 2019, at the federal courthouse in Lexington. He faces a possible sentence of up to 2 years of imprisonment on each count of sending threatening communications, and of up to 5 years for possessing and transferring the identity information. The Court will impose a sentence after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the applicable federal statutes.

Robert M. Duncan, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and James Robert Brown, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, jointly made the announcement.

The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The United States was represented by Assistant United States Attorney Dmitriy Slavin and Special Assistant United States Attorney James Chapman.