Workers in an Indiana post office were forced to evacuate their workplace yesterday, when the fourth “hoax bomb” targeting Toyota’s US facilities in the last week was discovered there. The AP [via Google] reports that the latest package was addressed to Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana in Princeton, IN and according to Toyota spokesfolks, it is
similar to other suspicious packages mailed to our corporate office in Erlanger, Kentucky, on Friday and our West Virginia and Texas plants on Monday. All of these packages were found to be non-threatening
All four packages bore handwritten originating addresses in Nigeria, and contained devices described in the latest instance as a cardboard tube containing electronic components. Auto industry PR guys, you have a new worst-case scenario…
But is this string of seemingly-connected hoax attacks an indication of a larger threat? With no answers forthcoming, Toyota is clearly taking the situation seriously, and has alerted its other US corporate facilities to be on the alert for further packages. Thus far, only the Indiana post office and Toyota’s Erlanger, Kentucky corporate offices have been evacuated due to the threatening packages; the packages sent to Toyota’s Buffalo, West Virginia and San Antonio, Texas plants were discovered in factory mailrooms and were deemed non-threatening without triggering an evacuation.
Because of the ambiguous nature of the devices found, Toyota is hesitating to even call the packages “threats,” telling Reuters
For all we know, it could be that these packages were legitimate attempts to contact Toyota
Regardless of Toyota’s soft-pedaling, the FBI has joined Postal Inspectors and the Indiana State Police in investigating the string of threatening packages. None of the investigating law enforcement bodies has publicly commented on the case.
So, what the hell is going on? Is a well-meaning Nigerian mechanic trying to return parts to Toyota’s US facilities? Is this the random work of a loon, or the amateurish work of a wannabe anti-Toyota crusader? Toyota’s tumultuous 2010 leaves all possibilities on the table, and until law enforcement reveals more details about the investigation, we’ve got little choice but to speculate.
Sounds like something a potential scammer might get put up to on 419eater or the like.
“Is a well-meaning Nigerian mechanic trying to return parts to Toyota’s US facilities?”
Maybe he has a few million dollars he’d like to give Toyota as well. Help them pay their fines.
Maybe it’s a Nigerian 419 scam…
“Request for Urgent Business Relationship
Dear esteemed Toyota Weaving Loom factory executive,
My name is Dr. Mgube Okme, and I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. I am top official at Nigerian hydrogen automaker NAIC, and will soon manufacture and export extremely high quantity of advanced auto to your country. I am enclosing example prototype car. Please guard from revelation from my competitor car factories with utmost secrecy. To make this great profit opportunity occur, we will use $5M funds currently trapped in Nigeria bank due to lack of oversea partner. To commence this business I solicit your assistance to untrap this funds. If you are so kind as to wire merely the sum of $5000 USDollar to my bank account in Nigeria, I will be able to manufacture 20,000 advanced hydrogen car and export to USA next week. The profit will be minimum of $10M, so this is low risk investment. Please commence the transaction within 7 days of receipt of this official letter, and we will ensure your financial no risk by placing your name on the transaction.
Yours ever so faithfully,
Mgube Okme”
Now that right there is funny, I don’t care who you are.
Now that Ray DaHood has declared open season on Toyota, nothing surprises me. Of course, these packages might turn out to be the work of a disgruntled Toyota owner, but they’ll get creative minds thinking about what other forms of “direct action” can be taken to keep Toyota mired in controversy and negative publicity. Make some popcorn – the show is just beginning.
If we follow the logic that anyone who criticizes something is thereafter responsible for actions taken by third party loons, then Ray LaHood and other safety crusaders must be held to account.
Fleet, it’s called “demonizing”. It’s the signal to attack, and a declaration that the target is a duck in a shooting gallery. Expect Sandy Berger-types everywhere to step up. That subsequent assaults naturally come from a variety of directions is part of the misdirection the initiators are counting on.
Tparkit, Ray Lahood may be biased against Toyota, but I believe his assault on Toyota, if succeeds, will only make the US passenger car market healthier. Think of this as a more intelligent form of anti-trust. Right now there’s a dangerous Toyota-Honda duopoly controlling the market. Both Toyota and Honda wield tremendous market power, which is not a good news for US car buyers. Basic economics teaches us that the less market power each player exercises, the more competitive the market becomes and, ultimately, every party is better off, especially the consumer. What is important here is that some action against Honda should also taken so that both duopolists’ positions are considerably weakened.
Together, Toyota and Honda have about 25% US market share. Tell me how that’s a duopoly? And how exactly are they “controlling the market”?
“What is important here is that some action against Honda should also taken so that both duopolists’ positions are considerably weakened.”
Wonderful! Thank you for being so clear! These days, shills for union power and the Democrat/labor axis usually hide behind pseudo-academic eloquence, smarmy condescension, feelgood soundbites about children and the environment, multi-layered organizational complexity, spin-and-smear, proxies, false-front groups, and their traditional army of getaway drivers in the media.
But you’ve pulled the sheet off all this to show the naked aggression, larceny, violence, and organized theft that always lurks just off-stage. Except when the likes of Acorn or campus radicals show their anti-Constitutional ways, people tend to forget your team’s brick-through-the-windshield mentality. People forget that there is absolutely nothing your coalition won’t do, and no one you won’t harm, to get what you want for yourselves. If Americans want to buy Honda’s, well, they shouldn’t be allowed to, and various styles of thugs will find extralegal ways to stop them.
If your crowd faces any major obstacle at the moment, perhaps it’s that the economic contraction is bringing to light that the public sector has for decades been looting the nation via its wage and pension deals. This kind of clarity spells trouble, enough to get a Republican governor elected in New Jersey of all places – so you better take what you can from the rest of us while the taking is good.
The FBI is blaming a disgruntled inventor from Nigeria. The FBI says the suspicious package was in fact a prototype for a turn signal.
TTAC is going to have to think up another conspiracy theory now.