(Bloomberg) -- The New York Police Department is investigating a number of ‘WANTED’ posters of senior executives that have been plastered over parts of Manhattan.
The posters included images of insurance leaders including UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Brian Thompson, who was murdered last Wednesday, as well as executives from financial firms. The pictures of Thompson were crossed out with a red X.
The posters echoed the words etched on bullet casings found by Thompson, which means they could instill fear and are explicitly threatening in nature, Rebecca Weiner, deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism at the NYPD, said by phone. They are “out of the realm of something that would constitute free speech and more akin to something that would be considered a crime,” she said.
It’s the latest development among a string of incidents causing anxiety among business leaders in the wake of the fatal shooting of Thompson, prompting an increase in demand for private security. In addition to the posters, police are aware of a surge in online threats against executives, which Weiner says is part of a “trend” that’s sprung up over the last year or so of commentators targeting specific individuals in their posts.
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Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with Thompson’s murder, was found with a manifesto condemning high profits of the health care industry, saying “these parasites simply had it coming.”
The NYPD has said it’s on alert for “a risk that a wide range of extremists may view Mangione as a martyr and an example to follow,” according to a law enforcement document reviewed by Bloomberg. “Rhetoric may signal an elevated threat facing executives in the near-term.”
A police department analysis identified a social media post on Wednesday titled “Delay, Deny, Defend - Who Will Be Next?” The words match the inscriptions found on the bullets allegedly used by Mangione in the shooting and are also the title of a book that describes tactics that critics say are used by insurers to deny claims. The post went onto name the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, asking who would be next on the “corporate chopping block.”
The murder has spurred more executives to report threats they “otherwise had dismissed and now are thinking they shouldn’t ignore,” such as emails they’d shrugged off in the past, Weiner said.
In the hours after his murder, Thompson’s wife told NBC that he had received threats, suggesting they were related to potential insurance denials. Thompson though didn’t have security accompanying him.
--With assistance from Gillian Tan.
(Updates with interview with NYPD’s Rebecca Weiner in third paragraph.)
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