Authorities declared Hillsboro Hospital safe after a bomb threat this afternoon.
The Hillsboro Community Hospital received bomb threats early this afternoon. The emails came to two individuals at the hospital.
“Early this afternoon a couple of employees received an email explaining that there was a bomb on the premises. The request was for us to send them over 20,000 in bitcoins. Every bitcoin is worth around $3,254 each so that times 20,000 is what they were wanting,” said Nurse Manager Kelli Olson.
While this initially alarmed hospital personnel as it seemed very targetted, Kansas Bureau of Investigations later confirmed that someone from Russia sent the two emails, as well as emails to other institutions, randomly and some went through while others didn’t. It was all a part of the plan for the scam artists according to Hillsboro Police Officer Jessey Hiebert, who was the officer in charge.
“We implemented our incident command system and just followed through on it. We train for this and never expect to use it. But we did it and it worked perfectly,” said Olson.
The patients were all transferred to nearby facilities and will remain there for the remainder of their hospitalizations.
“We were given the all clear around 5:30 p.m.” said Olson.
The ER is now open.
