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Past incidents

Last update: September 28, 2007 - 9:56 PM

Some recent instances of people caught fabricating hate crimes in Minnesota:

• 1990: A racist letter on stationery bearing a Ku Klux Klan emblem blamed black residents for crime in a south Minneapolis neighborhood and encouraged torching their cars. The letter was a hoax designed to hurt the man named in it.

• 1996-97: A black woman living in St. Paul scrawled racial epithets on packages and sent them to herself and nationally known black leaders. She claimed white racists working for UPS had damaged or lost packages and tried to collect $143,500 for each loss. She was sentenced to federal prison.

• 2004: A former Bethel Seminary student pleaded guilty to making a terroristic threat by scrawling a violent, racist message on his pickup and saying someone else had done it.

JOHN WAREHAM