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A former Boeing machinist was sentenced Friday morning in U.S. District Court in Seattle to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $231,100 in restitution for threatening Boeing, Shell Oil and Chevron Oil.
Gino Turrella, 47, of Des Moines, was convicted by a jury in November of 19 criminal counts for making interstate communications with threat to injure, making threat by instrument of interstate commerce, possessing a firearm during threats of violence and identity theft.
According to the indictment and other court documents, Turrella created e-mail accounts in the names of a former Boeing supervisor and a former co-worker from another company and then sent threats to other officials.
Prosecutors say Turrella began making threats after he was disciplined by Boeing in 2004 for failing to comply with some of the manufacturer's specifications for a critical part that attaches an airplane's wings to the fuselage. Turrella was given a short suspension for his lapse at work, the second within several weeks.
Shortly after he returned, according to court documents, threatening graffiti began appearing in the men's restroom in the shop. Several months later, the supervisor responsible for the discipline received a series of inter-company envelopes each containing a single bullet.
Turrella was suspected, and he was suspended indefinitely and eventually fired in 2005. Two years later, prosecutors say, he began sending a series of threatening e-mails, some to a co-worker at his new employer who had bullied him.
In the e-mails, Turrella -- who prosecutors say owned more than 100 firearms -- threatened to "shoot every employee I see" and said he would strap himself with explosives and detonate himself "in order to cause maximum death and destruction in the workplace."
In an e-mail to Shell Oil's Anacortes refinery in 2008, the jury found, Turrella sent an e-mail saying he had planted a bomb. The e-mails were sent via the wireless network at the King County Library System, investigators found.
Prosecutors said Turrella's laptop contained evidence linking it to the bogus e-mail accounts, and that Turrella was logged on to the wireless network at the library at the time they were sent.
During his sentencing, Turrella was also ordered to forfeit his extensive collection of firearms.
