Bomb threat leads to Rhode Island Wal-Mart evacuation, money transfer

A bomb threat that caused the evacuation of a Wal-Mart and led employees to wire $10,000 to the caller appears to be part of a broader scam targeting other businesses around the country, authorities said.\nAn unidentified man called the Newport store Tuesday morning, saying he had a bomb and would harm employees. He also demanded that workers transfer $10,000 to an account, said Newport Police Sgt. James Quinn. The store complied, Quinn said.\nFBI spokesman Rich Kolko said the threat appears related to a plot in recent days targeting banks and stores near Phoenix, Detroit, Salt Lake City and Philadelphia.\nAn anonymous caller made a bomb threat Tuesday against a Dillons grocery in Hutchinson, Kan., demanding that the store wire money to his bank account and ordering everyone in the store to disrobe. No one was injured and no money was paid, police said.\nAuthorities said the caller seemed to have visual access to the store, although officials were investigating whether the caller was out of state and may have hacked into the store’s security system.\n“If they can access the Internet, they can get to anything,” Hutchinson Police Chief Dick Heitschmidt said. “Anyone in the whole world could have access, if that’s what really happened.”\nThe FBI was looking into whether the calls to the banks and stores were being placed from overseas and was compiling reports from local police departments to probe for similarities between the cases, Kolko said Wednesday.\n“At this point, there’s enough similarities that we think it’s potentially one person or one group,” Kolko said from Washington.\nPolice in Virginia said a similar threat was made at a store there Tuesday. In that case, no money was sent and no bomb was found.