DALLAS — 9/23/26 – United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould announced that Donald Ray McCray, 67, was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release for mailing threatening communications to several U.S. District Court Judges in the Northern District of Texas and the Eastern District of New York and sending hoax biological weapons to the Federal Court House in Fort Worth, Texas.
A federal jury convicted McCray of three counts of mailing threatening communications and one count of hoax weapons of mass destruction on April 15. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr imposed the 210-month sentence today.
“Donald McCray’s threats were aimed at the very core of our justice system,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould. “Sending white powder and violent messages to judges and court staff is a criminal attempt to bully and destabilize the institutions that our system of justice relies on. Our office will always defend the integrity of the courts and hold those that threaten public servants fully accountable.”
“Threats against federal and state government employees are serious crimes that undermine our system of government. No public servant should be forced to confront this kind of intimidation,” said FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock. “We would like to thank our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners for working together to secure this sentence.”
According to court documents, while incarcerated in a Texas state prison, McCray sent multiple threatening letters containing white powder to the clerk of courts at the Fort Worth and Amarillo federal courthouses in March 2025. In those letters, McCray threatened to kill multiple state and federal government employees, including federal district court judges. After being indicted in June 2025, McCray appeared at a hearing in federal court and made further threats against various government employees and district court judges.
McCray will be transferred back to state custody to stand trial for attempted murder of a prison guard.
The FBI’s Dallas Field Office and U.S. Marshals Service conducted the investigation with assistance from the U.S. Postal Inspectors Service, Ft. Worth Police Department, Ft. Worth Fire Department, Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services, Tarrant County Department of Public Health, the Texas Tech Biological Threat Research Laboratory, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Office of Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Theodore V. Parran III from the National Security Section and Chad E. Meacham from the Fraud Section prosecuted the case.
