Northeast
Pennsylvania fantasy football competition leads to fake threats of violence, federal and foreign investigation
A fantasy football competition in Philadelphia got out of hand, with federal and foreign authorities launching an investigation into it after a disgruntled player falsely accused a fellow participant of intending to carry out violent attacks.
Prosecutors with the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that 25-year-old Matthew Gabriel pleaded guilty to two counts of interstate and foreign communication of threats.
Authorities said a disagreement between Gabriel and another member of a fantasy football online chat group allegedly led to him telling police that the member, who he knew was going to study abroad in Europe in August 2023, was planning a bombing and mass shooting in Norway.
Gabriel wrote that a fellow fantasy football player was “headed around Oslo and has a shooting planned with multiple people on his side involved. They plan to take as many as they can at a concert and then head to a department store,” according to prosecutors.
“I just can’t have random people dying on my conscience,” he wrote to authorities.
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A fantasy football competition in Philadelphia got out of hand, with federal authorities launching an investigation into it after a player falsely accused a fellow participant of intending to carry out violent attacks. (Tim Heitman / Imagn Images)
Prosecutors said that they took the tip seriously and that U.S. and Norwegian investigators spent “hundreds of man-hours reacting to and investigating the threatened mass shooting over the course of a five-day period.”
Gabriel’s ruse did not last, with the FBI interviewing him and the 25-year-old admitting that the “tip” was a lie.
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Further investigation into the international ruse revealed that Gabriel emailed the University of Iowa with a similar threat earlier in the year.
In the second threat, Gabriel alleged that the same fantasy football player was threatening to “blow up the school,” which Gabriel knew was untrue, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero warned fantasy football players to not participate in similar “extremely disruptive” hoaxes. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magan / File)
Gabriel was released on Tuesday on a $25,000 bond and is scheduled to be sentenced in January. If found guilty, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero warned other fantasy football players to not participate in similar “extremely disruptive” hoaxes.
“While already being prosecuted for one hoax threat spurred by, of all things, his fantasy football league, Matthew Gabriel inexplicably decided to send another,” Romero said. “His actions were extremely disruptive and consumed significant law enforcement resources on two continents, diverting them from actual incidents and investigations. Hoax threats aren’t a joke or protected speech, they’re a crime.
“My advice to keyboard warriors who’d like to avoid federal charges: always think of the potential consequences, before you hit ‘post’ or ‘send.’”
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State Treasurer Erick Russell achieved a 14% increase last year investing Connecticut’s pension fund assets, gaining roughly $8.3 billion for retirement programs for state employees, teachers and other municipal workers.
The state, which oversees nearly $69 billion in pension assets, aims for an average annual return on pension investments of 6.9%.
Expectations for bigger gains grew throughout the past year as key stock market indices surged. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges, grew by more than 13% in 2025. And the S&P 500, which follows 500 traded companies, topped 16%.
Among peer states and other entities that manage public pension funds holding more than $10 billion in assets, Connecticut’s 2025 performance ranks in the top 17%, Russell said.
But the treasurer, who also announced this week he will seek a second term, said the latest big earnings stem from more than the big gains Wall Street enjoyed in 2025.
“Markets certainly have been strong, but a lot of this is about our overall asset allocation,” said Russell, who updated the Investment Advisory Council Tuesday on the state’s portfolio. “The progress we’ve been making … is a good sign that we’re set up for future success.”
Russell also reported investment gains of 10.3% for the 2024 calendar year and 12.8% for 2023.
State officials particularly have focused on improving investment returns since a May 2023 report from Yale University researchers found Connecticut’s results badly lagged the nation’s over the prior decade.
That only compounded an even larger pension problem that state officials began to address in the early 2010s. According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Connecticut governors and legislatures failed to save adequate for pension benefits for more than seven decades prior to 2011. This deprived the state treasurer of huge assets that otherwise could have been invested to generate billions of dollars in revenue over those seven decades.
The treasurer’s office under Russell has put more funds into private and domestic markets and curbed reliance on investment managers who receive large fees for their work.
Gov. Ned Lamont and the General Assembly also have greatly assisted efforts to bolster the fiscal health of pension programs in recent years. Since 2020, they have used $10 billion from budget surpluses to make supplemental payments into pensions for state employees and municipal teachers. That’s in addition to annual required payments that currently approach $3.3 billion in the General Fund.
“These returns highlight the impressive work of Treasurer Russell and his team in increasing investment returns,” Lamont’s budget spokesman, Chris Collibee, said Tuesday. “Gov. Lamont’s focus has been on building a sustainable Connecticut for the future. Every dollar in additional investment revenue is funds the state can use to cut taxes and provide more resources for essential programs like education, child care, housing, and social services safety nets.”
Russell, a New Haven Democrat, said he has tried to make the office both “disciplined and forward-looking.”
“Over the last several years, we haven’t just changed how the office works, we’ve changed who it works for. We’re ushering in a new era of fiscal responsibility, making significant payments on long-term debt that has allowed us to invest in the residents of Connecticut and begin to lift up communities across our state.”
Russell also brokered a key compromise in 2023 between Lamont and the legislature that salvaged the Baby Bonds program, an initiative that invests long-term funds in Connecticut’s poorest children when they’re born to help finance educational and business opportunities later in life.
Keith M. Phaneuf is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org). Copyright 2026 © The Connecticut Mirror.
A person was hit by a vehicle Tuesday morning in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Police responded just after 10 a.m. to the crash at the intersection of Elm Street and Carter Street.
Officers began treating the pedestrian, who was then taken to an area hospital with unspecified injuries.
The driver stayed at the scene, the Waltham Police Department said.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
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