A San José State Grad Student Is Charged With Faking a Neo-Nazi Bomb Hoax —
His Own Politics Ran the Opposite Direction.
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged Ziheng “Tony” Fang, a 30-year-old San José State University data-science graduate student, on July 9, 2026, with running a campaign of hoax bomb threats and hateful graffiti that rattled the 23-campus California State University system for a year and a half. According to the criminal complaint, SJSU police logged more than twenty threatening restroom messages between October 2024 and May 2026 — bomb threats, mass-shooting references, swastikas, and slurs against Jews, Muslims, and other groups, several timed to specific dates.
The count Fang is federally charged with traces to one note, found November 5, 2025, taped inside a men’s-room stall in MacQuarrie Hall: “!WARNING! MASS BOMB NEXT WEEK,” ringed by four swastikas, beside lines reading “This is a white nation,” “Kill all Muslims,” “MAGA 2028,” and “Kill Zohran” — an apparent reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY). A second note on the same wall read “Kill all Jews, Muslims, Chinks, and Mexicans” and threatened a “Mass bombing 11/11 and 11/12.” No explosive device was ever recovered. This is charged as a hoax.
The case’s stranger detail, first reported by the Jewish News Syndicate and corroborated by the Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post, is Fang’s own online footprint: reportedly progressive, anti-ICE, pro-immigration, pro-Palestinian, and anti-MAGA — the ideological opposite of the swastikas and “MAGA 2028” scrawled in the messages he is accused of writing. Prosecutors have not alleged a motive in the complaint. What they have alleged is a fingerprint, a badge-access log, and a security-camera trail.
- 20+ — threatening or hateful restroom messages SJSU police documented, October 2024–May 2026 · Source: DOJ press release; KTVU FOX 2
- 21 months — from the first documented threat to the federal hoax charge · Source: DOJ; SJSU communications timeline
- 5 years — the statutory maximum under 18 U.S.C. § 1038, the federal hoax-threats charge Fang faces · Source: DOJ Office of Public Affairs
- 16 of 18 — badge-restricted incidents where key-card logs allegedly placed Fang inside the building beforehand · Source: KRON4; Patch
- 0 — actual explosive devices ever recovered in the year-and-a-half campaign · Source: DOJ; KTVU FOX 2
SJSU police began logging hateful and threatening restroom messages in October 2024. The pattern accelerated through the spring of 2026: a wave of graffiti between March 4 and March 24 included “eradication of Jews,” “make Osama proud,” “avoid SJSU 4 Muslims,” and a message invoking September 11 — “SJSU, Sorry, But for Allah 3/11 Will Be 9/11.” More messages followed in April, including one on April 28 threatening an attack on May 4. Each new note triggered the same response: emergency alerts, canceled classes, and buildings that investigators describe as effectively empty on days carrying a threatened date.
The disruption was real regardless of who was behind it. Students and faculty spent a year and a half unsure whether the next restroom note was the one that meant something. SJSU’s official statement on the incidents was blunt: “The university condemns hate, violence and threats of violence. There is no place for antisemitism and racism at SJSU.” That statement came before anyone was publicly named as a suspect.
Racist, antisemitic graffiti has been found again at San Jose State University — the latest in a string of hateful messages campus police are investigating.
The federal complaint does not rely on a confession. It relies on physical and digital trails. Investigators say a fingerprint recovered from the November 5, 2025 note matched Fang’s. Campus key-card logs allegedly placed him inside the buildings where notes were found in 16 of 18 instances that required badge access, typically shortly before a message was discovered. Surveillance video allegedly captured him entering or near the relevant restrooms as recently as a day before several notes turned up.
SJSU police made an earlier, separate arrest on state charges in May 2026, before Fang was federally named in July. That state case — felony vandalism and felony publishing of threats, with a hate-crime enhancement still to be determined — runs on its own track through the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office. The fact pattern in both cases traces to the same restroom campaign, but they remain legally distinct filings with separate charges, separate courts, and separate timelines.
A San Jose State University graduate student has been arrested and now faces federal charges tied to a monthslong campaign of hoax threats found scrawled in campus restrooms.
The messages Fang is accused of writing read like textbook far-right hate speech — swastikas, “This is a white nation,” “MAGA 2028.” But according to reporting on Fang’s own social media, cross-referenced by the Jewish News Syndicate, the Times of Israel, and the Jerusalem Post, his publicly expressed politics ran the other way: critical of ICE, supportive of immigrants, pro-Palestinian, and opposed to MAGA politics generally. None of that is proof of anything by itself — people’s private and public views can diverge, and the complaint does not require prosecutors to explain why Fang allegedly wrote what he wrote. But the contrast is exactly why outlets covering the case have framed it as an alleged false-flag hoax: someone allegedly manufacturing the imagery of one political extreme while apparently holding the opposite views.
That framing matters for how the public reads the case, but it changes nothing about the legal standard. Fang is presumed innocent. The government still has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he wrote and posted the specific message charged in the complaint. Motive — whether it was genuine belief, an attempt to frame a political enemy, or something else entirely — is not an element prosecutors must establish under 18 U.S.C. § 1038, which criminalizes conveying false information about a threat, not holding any particular ideology.
Federal prosecutors say a San Jose State graduate student is charged with a false-information hoax count carrying up to five years, tied to a threatening note found taped inside a campus restroom in November 2025.
U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon (Trump-appointed, DOJ Civil Rights Division), and FBI Special Agent in Charge Scott Schelble of the San Francisco Field Office announced the federal charge on July 9, 2026: false information and hoaxes under 18 U.S.C. § 1038, carrying a statutory maximum of five years — the enhanced tiers of up to twenty years or life apply only where the hoax results in injury or death, which is not alleged here. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah E. Griswold is the lead prosecutor, assisted by DOJ Civil Rights Division trial attorney Connor Cheadle. A criminal complaint was filed that day in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California; Fang made his initial federal appearance July 10–11, and a further court date was reported for July 13–14, 2026.
The department has charged a graduate student who allegedly posted hateful and threatening messages, including bomb threats, at San Jose State University.
That federal count is only part of Fang’s exposure. An earlier, separate track runs through state court: SJSU police announced an arrest on May 20–21, 2026 on felony vandalism and felony publishing-of-threats charges, with a hate-crime enhancement that remains a call for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office. Both cases — state and federal — are pending. Fang has been charged, not convicted, on any count, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence on all of them.
Long before anyone was arrested, someone outside the university was already on record saying SJSU was moving too slowly. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) sent a formal oversight letter to the university on March 19–20, 2026 — roughly two months before the state arrest and nearly four months before the federal charge — demanding answers about how a public university had failed for a year and a half to identify who was writing bomb threats and antisemitic graffiti inside its own buildings.
“San Jose State University officials' response to growing antisemitism on the campus premises is inadequate and demands accountability.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Chairman, Senate HELP Committee — oversight letter, March 2026
SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson addressed the campus directly when the state arrest was announced in May, acknowledging the toll the year and a half between the first logged threat and any named suspect had taken on students.
“These incidents have caused real harm across our campus. In particular, our Jewish and Muslim students, faculty, and staff are experiencing the tragedy and hateful rhetoric intensely.”
Cynthia Teniente-Matson, SJSU President — campus statement, May 21, 2026
The federal case now closing in on a resolution does not erase the two months between Cassidy’s public warning and campus police naming a suspect, or the twenty-one months between the first logged threat and a federal charge. A public university system spent a year and a half unable to stop bathroom-wall threats of mass violence from someone who, on the government’s own account, was leaving fingerprints, tripping badge readers, and walking past security cameras the entire time.
Ziheng “Tony” Fang, a 30-year-old SJSU data-science graduate student, is charged — federally and separately at the state level — with a 21-month hoax campaign of bomb threats and neo-Nazi graffiti that never produced an actual device. Prosecutors say a fingerprint, badge logs, and surveillance video tie him to the notes; reporting on his own social media shows a political footprint that runs the opposite direction from the hate speech charged against him — an alleged false flag, not a confirmed motive. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) was demanding accountability from SJSU months before campus police made an arrest. Fang is presumed innocent on every count until proven otherwise in court.
