East Bay man who worked as FBI agent charged with cyberstalking, witness tampering – Times Herald Online

OAKLAND. The 54-year-old Castro Valley resident, who worked as a FBI agent for 12 years, was charged with cyberstalking, witness tampering and obstructing a criminal investigation through bribery, prosecutors said.

Paul Raymond Flood was arrested Tuesday and made his first court appearance Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

A federal grand jury indictment, handed up in May and unsealed Wednesday, charges Flood with one count of cyberstalking; two counts of witness tampering by intimidation, threats, corrupt practices or deception; one count of witness tampering by harassment; and one count of obstructing a criminal investigation by accepting a bribe.

In the indictment, prosecutors said the victim, a first-year law student, initially contacted Flood seeking information about a career with the FBI. She was referred by a family member who knew Flood, a special agent from 2007 to 2019.

A few weeks after meeting the victim, Flood began making “unsolicited romantic advances” and engaging in a “pattern of harassment and intimidation,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the act involved creating and using at least 79 different phone numbers between mid-October 2018 and September 2019 to contact the victim.

The victim’s family feared retaliation and did not report him to authorities until June 2019, prosecutors said. The FBI soon suspended Flood, and the US Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General opened an investigation into his alleged conduct.

In response, Flood began “pressuring, harassing, intimidating and persuading” the victim to help him without giving statements or testifying at the inquest, prosecutors said, adding that he threatened to commit suicide and offered bribes to the victim.

According to prosecutors, Flood convinced the victim to evade investigators’ attempts to contact her for questioning and serve her with a grand jury subpoena in July 2019.

Flood also tried to convince the victim “to enter into a sham marriage with him so that she would not have to testify against him, buying her a $17,000 engagement ring in the process,” prosecutors said. The victim ultimately did not implement the scheme.

If convicted of the charges, Flood faces up to a decade behind bars. For example, each count of witness tampering by intimidation, threats, corrupt beliefs or misleading conduct carries a maximum prison term of 20 years, according to prosecutors.

Flood has been released on parole and will next appear in court on January 15.