Maryland man charged with sending threatening letters to Jewish institutions across Northeast

Chris Palmer, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Jun 17, 2025

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PHILADELPHIA — A 55-year-old Maryland man has been charged with sending threatening letters to Jewish institutions in several states, often making menacing references to Israel, Gaza, or attacks against Jewish people, federal authorities in Philadelphia said Tuesday.

Clift A. Seferlis, of Kensington, Maryland, admitted during an interview with the FBI on Monday that he’d sent at least three dozen letters or postcards to Jewish organizations across the Northeast over the past several months, authorities said in a criminal complaint.

Although none of the targets is named in the document, prosecutors said Seferlis — a self-described historian, masonry worker and licensed tour guide — mailed them to entities in Philadelphia, State College, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

All were written on a typewriter, prosecutors said, and many contained cut-out newspaper articles about the war in Israel and Gaza. Some included references to Kristallnacht, the brutal antisemitic attacks across Nazi Germany and parts of Austria in 1938.

And in one letter, sent last month to a Philadelphia-based Jewish institution — which prosecutors did not name — Seferlis wrote in part: “The hatred toward you all, your (institution), and especially the nation of Israel is at an all time high and is only getting worse.” Then the letter asked if the recipient cared about Gaza, and whether it would take “something happening to your beloved (institution) to make that happen,” court documents say.

Seferlis was arrested Monday in Maryland, officials said, and was awaiting arraignment in Philadelphia, where his case will be prosecuted. He did not have an attorney listed in court documents Tuesday evening.

He is accused of sending his letters from March through June, and prosecutors said he sent at least seven to the Philadelphia institution, threatening to destroy it and saying it would need to be rebuilt.

In a chilling twist, prosecutors said, he also told the told the FBI on Monday that he’d given tours of the institution in the past — and that he had been planning to do so again later this week.

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