A Marietta man who falsely claimed to have been hired by terrorists to build a weapon that could bring down an airliner was sentenced Monday to nearly three years in a federal penitentiary, authorities said.
Henry Guy Jones pleaded guilty last month to lying to federal agents when he told them of the alleged plot, in which he was to build a weapon that could contain a combustible, poisonous or toxic device that would be released on board a commercial passenger plane, prosecutors said.
“The defendant diverted much-needed federal resources dedicated to address true threats of terrorism to investigate his web of lies,” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a news release.
Brian D. Lamkin, special agent in charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office, said most of the information the agency receives on national security matters are from “solid citizens trying to assist their government.”
Occasionally, though, “for varying motives, the FBI is engaged by individuals who choose to fabricate stories that not only waste valuable investigative resources but can have far-reaching implications if that information were acted on," Lamkin said.
"The FBI cannot and will not tolerate such incidents as was presented in this case,” he said.
The 51-year-old Jones was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison followed by 3 years’ supervised release. He was remanded to the custody of U.S. Marshals at the conclusion of his sentencing in Atlanta.
According to prosecutors and information presented in court, Jones contacted the GBI in February 2010 and told them two Jordanian nationals and a U.S. citizen had hired him to build a destructive device to be used against an airliner. Jones repeated the story to FBI agents.
When questioned about inconsistencies in his story, Jones tried to create evidence of the existence of the three individuals, and he built a prototype device and provided it to the FBI.
In June 2010, Jones finally admitted he had lied to agents and that there was neither a terrorist plot nor a contract to build a destructive device.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill E. Steinberg.
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