Oakland man gets 2½ years for crank phone threats

An Oakland man was sentenced today to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for threatening to blow up San Francisco City Hall and the Westfield Shopping Mall.

Devon Craft, 22, pleaded guilty in May to threatening to destroy property by explosives. He admitted that on July 13, 2006, he used a cell phone to place four 911 calls threatening "terrorist attacks" in San Francisco.

Craft admitted that he tried to disguise his voice by using a "Middle Eastern accent" in his calls, during which he also threatened to blow up the "San Francisco Tribune" and said innocent people would die, prosecutors said.

Craft also admitted to making threatening phone calls in June 2006 regarding attacks at the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges "so that he could get time off work to visit his son at the hospital," prosecutors said. Court records did not indicate how Craft believed the threats would provide him with time off.

At a hearing today in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered Craft to serve 30 months in federal prison. The sentence will be on top of state-prison terms he is now serving for unrelated theft and robbery in cases from Alameda County.

Authorities said Craft was sentenced to more than two years in state prison for store parking lot robberies in November 2006 in Alameda County. Craft grabbed women's backpacks, purses and handbags in the robberies, authorities said.