A North Fort Myers man who was already a federal felon for selling ricin and abrin on the dark web has been sentenced to 24 years for the pipe bomb Fort Myers officers found coming out of his pocket at a 911 hang-up call

A North Fort Myers man whose earlier federal conviction involved selling the poisons ricin and abrin over the dark web has been sentenced to 24 years in prison over the pipe bomb that Fort Myers officers found on him at a 911 hang-up call last year.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced on Thursday that Jesse William Korff, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell for possession of firearms and ammunition by a convicted felon, possession of unregistered silencers, possession of an unregistered destructive device, and attempted malicious use of an explosive while on federal supervised release.

Korff pleaded guilty on January 14, 2026. The court also ordered him to forfeit the firearms, ammunition, silencers and the destructive device. U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe made the announcement.

What the government says happened

According to court documents described in the release, the Fort Myers Police Department was dispatched to a 911 hang-up call on May 19, 2025, at a residence in Fort Myers. Officers arrived and reported a hostage situation.

Officers said they found a man, later identified as Korff, in a scuffle with a woman. They restrained him in handcuffs and seized a firearm and a silencer that had come loose during the struggle. They also found a pipe bomb coming out of his pocket.

The Lee County Sheriff's Office bomb squad used a robot to remove the pipe bomb before Korff was taken into custody. Later examination and testing of the device by the sheriff's office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the release says, confirmed that an attempt had been made to detonate it.

A second firearm, another silencer and ammunition were seized from his vehicle. Officers and agents recovered other bomb-making materials inside his home.

The case was investigated by the Fort Myers Police Department, the Lee County Sheriff's Office and the ATF, and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Morgan. The release lists it under Project Safe Neighborhoods.

The conviction that made the gun charge possible

Korff was barred from possessing a firearm or ammunition because of an earlier federal conviction, which the sentencing release lists only in summary: transfer and possession of a toxin for use as a weapon, smuggling toxins from the United States, and conspiracy to kill, maim or injure a person in a foreign country.

That case has its own public record. A Justice Department release from 2015 states that Korff, then 20 and living in Labelle, pleaded guilty in August 2014 to five counts involving toxins, five counts of smuggling them and one count of conspiring to kill a person in a foreign country.

It describes him selling ricin and abrin through the underground marketplace Black Market Reloaded under the name Snowman840, advising buyers on the quantities needed to kill a person of a given weight, and mailing the toxins to purchasers in India, Austria, Denmark and England concealed in packages. In December 2013, it says, he supplied abrin to a buyer in London who intended to poison a woman she described as her mother, and agreed to supply a second dose when the first did not work.

An undercover agent bought two doses before that second shipment went out, collecting them from a rest stop about ten miles outside Fort Myers, hidden inside wax candles. Laboratory analysis found active abrin. He was sentenced to 110 months in prison, five years of supervised release and a $1,000 fine.

Those five years of supervision are what connects the two cases. The charge Korff pleaded guilty to this year is attempted malicious use of an explosive while on federal supervised release.

What it means here

The response on the day was a Southwest Florida one at every level. A city police department took a hung-up 911 call and walked into an armed man carrying an explosive on his body. The county bomb squad took the device off him by robot rather than risking a hand. The federal charge that carries the most weight exists because that device survived intact enough for a laboratory to establish what had been tried with it.

There is no state case in this record and no other person is accused of anything. The account of May 19, 2025 above is the government's, drawn from court documents, and Korff's own guilty plea is what settles it.