Two Men Jailed for Terrorizing the Public in Boston

Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, are being held on bond after they pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct and placing a hoax device in a publicity stunt gone awry that shut down parts of Boston.

City officials found 38 blinking electronic signs on bridges and other high-profile locations around the city of Boston on Wednesday, prompting them to close an interstate, a bridge, and deploy several bomb units. News channels maintained regular updates throughout the afternoon and the Coast Guard was called out to block off traffic on the Charles River.

The 1-foot tall signs resembled a circuit board, with batteries and protruding wires, and their intent was to advertise the television show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," by the Cartoon Network, a division of Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc.

The series advertised by the signs is a surreal cartoon for adults that features stories about a talking milkshake, a box of French fries, and a meatball. Most of the blinking signs showed a boxy cartoon character giving people the finger, which was easier to discern after dark than during the day.

Berdovsky, who is an artist, told The Boston Globe that the marketing company Interference Inc. had hired him to create the signs and said that he had been "kind of freaked out" by all the commotion the ad campaign caused. "I find it kind of ridiculous that they're making these statements on TV that we must not be safe from terrorism, because they were up there for three weeks and no one noticed. It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation," he said.

Fans of the show called the official response to the signs an overreaction. Some gathered outside the courthouse Thursday morning carrying sarcastic signs saying, "Free Peter" and "1-31-07 Never Forget." Berdovsky and Stevens, inside the courthouse listening to the prosecutor talking about the panic they had caused, appeared amused and smiled while he was talking. Some spectators in the gallery snickered as the prosecutor described the device found in the subway station beneath Interstate 93, because it appeared to contain C-4 explosive.

"It's clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location," Assistant Attorney General John Grossman said. "The appearance of this device and its location are crucial," Grossman said. "This device looks like a bomb."

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told reporters that the stunt was incomprehensible to law enforcement and city officials who had to respond to it. "It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme," Menino said. "I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today's incidents." Menino said the Turner’s "corporate greed" cost the Boston police department at least $750,000.

When Turner was notified of the problem in Boston Wednesday afternoon, the company contacted law enforcement officials in 10 cities— Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia—where the devices had been placed for the past two or three weeks. "We apologize to the city of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," said Phil Kent, chairman of Turner, adding that the marketing company had been ordered to remove the signs immediately.

Michael Rich, a lawyer representing Berdovsky and Stevens, said that his clients didn’t do anything wrong, because any electronic device could be described as looking like a bomb. "If somebody had left a VCR on the ground it would have been a device with wires, electronic components and a power source," he said. Fans of the cartoon show also mocked authorities. "It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days," said Jennifer Mason, 26. "You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city."

But Attorney General Martha Coakley says the perceived threat is no laughing matter, and authorities are looking into whether Turner or the other companies involved should be criminally charged. "We're not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city," Coakley said.