Judges grapple with surge in online threats, doxing, and harassment
Felony charges filed after two Hillsborough judges were targeted in 'pizza doxing' incidents, highlighting rising concerns over judicial harassment and online threats.
‘I think there are real concerns, and they require us to make conscious decisions to ensure that we are not taking unnecessary risks,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, who oversees Florida’s sprawling Middle District ‘But they are not going to make me stop doing my job and they’re not going to make me stop doing my job the right way.’
The recent pizza doxing of two Hillsborough County judges, and the filing of felony charges against a suspect, is just the latest example of a trend that has Florida judges increasingly concerned.
The incidents hit too close to home for 13th Circuit Chief Judge Christopher Sabella.
“I can say that I have seen a significant increase in similar instances of judicial harassment,” he said. “They do not all lead to criminal charges.”
Once considered a college prank, pizza doxing has taken on a much darker meaning as perpetrators increasingly employ it to protest adverse rulings.
Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, who oversees Florida’s sprawling Middle District, calls it an “intimidation tactic.”
“It’s a form of harassment,” she said. “It lets the judge know, ‘I know where you live, or I know where your daughter lives.’”
Until now, pizza doxing has been a mostly federal court phenomenon.
Recent U.S. Marshal Service figures show more than 100 incidents in seven states, including Florida, as more judges are assigned to hear some 200 pending challenges to the current administration’s policies.
According to a recent New York Times investigation, some 277 federal judges — nearly a third of the federal judiciary — have reported being threatened in some fashion this fiscal year.
In a sinister wrinkle, more than 20 of the pizza doxing incidents involved a perpetrator who placed an order using the name “Daniel Anderl.” The late son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas was murdered by a disgruntled litigant who also seriously wounded Salas’ husband, Mark Anderl, at the family’s New Jersey home in 2020.
The incident turned Salas into a national advocate and prompted Congress to approve the “Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act,” in 2022. Among other things, it limits the public dissemination of a judge’s personal identifying information.
The legislation raised awareness and increased funding for judicial security, but policing the internet remains a challenge, Howard says.
Federal judges receive a free “DeleteMe” service that helps pinpoint where a judge’s personal information is posted, but once it has been scrubbed, it tends to resurface within six months, she says.
“We are all encouraged to make efforts to get our information off the internet as much as possible, but because of all the publicly available information, it’s not so easy to do,” she says.
Judicial security remains a top priority in the Middle District, Howard assures, noting that a judicial security committee that her predecessor revived remains active.
“We just had a judges’ meeting very recently and we had representatives from the Administrative Office there to talk not only about judicial security, but also about online security and online threats,” she said.
Interim U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe, a former Greenberg Traurig shareholder who was appointed to the Middle District in March, agrees that threats against judges, court personnel, and even the 200 prosecutors he oversees, have been on the rise.
Before his last stint in private practice, Kehoe worked as a federal prosecutor for 20 years, with postings across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and South America.
“There have always been threats against judges, but now, in the internet age, the electronic age, the information age, they seem to be much more prevalent,” he said.
Kehoe declined to discuss ongoing investigations, but he said threats remain a top priority.
“I will say that they are vigorously being examined, every single threat against any member of court personnel, is currently being investigated vigorously,” he said. “And if it necessitates charges, believe me, we will submit an indictment to a grand jury for their review and vote.”
Judicial security has a special resonance in the Middle District.
Howard succeeded former Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan, who survived an assassination attempt at his Jacksonville home in 2013. A bullet that shattered a living room window missed Corrigan’s head by less than two inches.
The disgruntled criminal defendant who fired the shot, Aron Richardson, received 343-year sentence in 2016.
“Aron Richardson got Judge Corrigan’s home address in 15 minutes with just a few clicks on the internet,” Howard said.
Howard declined to say how often she has been threatened. In the past, she has been forced to tape a photo of a suspect to her kitchen cabinet to alert family members and to take packages to the courthouse for scanning. She recently upgraded her home security system.
Asked to describe her level of concern about rising threats, she hesitates.
“I think there are real concerns, and they require us to make conscious decisions to ensure that we are not taking unnecessary risks,” she says. “But they are not going to make me stop doing my job and they’re not going to make me stop doing my job the right way.”
Howard says it’s her sense that threats against federal judges have generally increased in the past two years in the Middle District, which stretches from Georgia to south of Naples and serves 13 million Floridians in 35 counties.
Howard said none of the 15 judges she oversees has reported receiving unsolicited pizza deliveries, although she is aware of a pizza doxing incident in the Southern District of Florida.
Chief Judge Sabella said the targeting of two of the 68 judges he oversees in Hillsborough County are the first pizza doxing incidents that he is aware of in Florida’s state court system. The arrest of a suspect was also unusual, he says.
According to a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s affidavit, Jonathan Mark Miller, a 49-year-old Plant City man, is facing two charges of “fraudulent use of personal information,” a third-degree felony, in connection with online pizza orders that targeted two Hillsborough County judges.
Miller has pleaded not guilty and remains free on a $5,000 bond, according to court records. He is represented by a public defender.
On March 4, a $381.70 order was placed online with a Pizza Hut for delivery to the home of one of a one of the judges, according to the affidavit. The order was made using the judge’s name, personal cell phone number and office email address, according to the affidavit.
On March 5, an online order for $252.88 was placed with another Pizza Hut for delivery to the home of the second judge, according to the affidavit. The order was made using the judge’s name, home phone number, and office email address, according to the affidavit.
Both judges became aware of the orders and cancelled them prior to delivery, according to the affidavit.
Investigators, armed with subpoenas, linked Miller to the IP address that was used to place the orders, according to the affidavit.
“The defendant was identified as the subscriber of the IP address utilized to commit this offense,” the affidavit states.
The affidavit also refers to a witness who confirmed that at the time, Miller lived at an address where he “did have a computer and his own internet service.”
According to the affidavit, the first judge on February 24 signed an order setting a hearing for a temporary injunction in which Miller was the respondent.
Court records also show that the second judge signed a final judgment against Miller on March 4, the same day the first pizza order was placed, according to the affidavit.
In a May 30 order, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz reassigned Miller’s case from the 13th Judicial Circuit to the neighboring Sixth Judicial Circuit.
Cases are often reassigned when there is a potential conflict of interest, Sabella notes.
Sabella said judicial security dominated recent meetings of the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, and Conference of County Court Judges of Florida.
Sabella was reassured in March, when Muñiz issued an order creating a Judicial Management Council “Workgroup on Judicial Security.” He was also pleased that 13th Judicial Circuit Trial Court Administrator Gina Justice is a member.
The order refers to U.S. Marshals Service figures showing the number of verified threats against federal judges “has doubled from historic patterns, and that 56 percent of participants in a recent survey of state judges report having been threatened.”
The order directs the workgroup to “make recommendations to the Supreme Court on threat reduction, threat detection, and threat response to promote enhanced security of judges and court system staff in this state.” A final report is due May 29, 2026.
More specifically, the order directs the panel to collect data on incidents and steps courts are taking to counter them.
That’s welcome news to U.S. District Judge Tom Barber, who heads the Middle District judicial security committee. Last year, Barber warned about what he considers to be a critical lack of security in state courts. Before President Donald Trump appointed him to the federal bench in 2018, Barber served as a circuit judge and county judge in the 13th Judicial Circuit. Before that, he served as an assistant state attorney and an assistant statewide prosecutor.
One of his biggest concerns, Barber says, is that state courts lack an equivalent to the U.S. Marshals Service, which has a separate division dedicated to judicial security that tracks threats against federal judges.
“So, there very well may have been several individual Pizza threats made to various different judges all over the state, but that information is not collected by any one central law enforcement agency,” Barber said. “For all we know, this could be a big problem in Dade County for example, but nobody here in Tampa would know about it.”
Barber suggests Florida consider following a Texas model. The Texas Legislature in 2017 approved the “Judge Julie Kocurek Judicial Security and Courthouse Security Act.” Among other things, it created a judicial security division within the Office of State Courts Administrator and required administrative judges throughout the state to form judicial security committees. Judge Judie Kocurek was shot and seriously wounded by an assailant in her driveway in 2015 in a failed assassination plot. Kocurek lost a finger but recovered.
The Workgroup on Judicial Security has also been directed to review “options for reducing risks from the publication or other release of personally identifiable information of judges and court staff.”
Sabella said preventing a judge’s personal identifying information from being easily accessible would go a long way toward improving security.
“I know we haven’t been as diligent as we should,” he said.
