Anthrax Scare Rattles Congress

Yellow warning sign with exclamation mark on red background — Photo: izzuanroslan / Shutterstock

Prosecutors say a Quincy, Illinois man mailed white-powder letters to four congressional offices, and the tests said it was salt, not safety.

Story Snapshot

Federal prosecutors charged Matthew Unglesbee with hoax and threat offenses.
Four letters allegedly carried a white granular substance and taunting notes.
Agents say the envelopes listed Unglesbee’s name and home address.
Testing found the substance non-hazardous, reportedly salt in at least one case.

Charges, Letters, And What Agents Say They Found

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois charged Matthew G. Unglesbee with mailing threatening communications and false information or hoaxes, citing federal statutes that cover threat mailings and deliberate scare tactics with fake hazards. An eight-page complaint described at least four envelopes sent to congressional offices in Chicago. The letters allegedly arrived in plain white envelopes with handwritten addresses and a white powder inside that triggered law enforcement response.

NBC News reported that three letters included the handwritten message “HA HA,” while a fourth read “HAH enjoy the gift,” details that prosecutors can argue show intent to alarm. ABC7 Chicago described the same notes as coming from the criminal complaint. Those brief messages lack specifics, but the setting matters. White powder mailings to lawmakers after 2001 signal danger by design, which is why responders treated them as urgent until testing ruled out toxins.

Physical Evidence, The Substance, And The Claimed Admission

Reporters said the envelopes displayed Unglesbee’s name and his Quincy address as the return address, a detail that ties the mailings to him if authentic and unaltered. The white material tested as non-hazardous. The Hill said investigators later identified it as salt, which explains why it looked like a threat while posing no physical harm. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that an FBI affidavit attributes an admission to Unglesbee that he mailed the four letters and used salt because it resembled anthrax.

That alleged statement, if presented at trial with proper safeguards, strengthens the hoax theory and the charge that he knew how staff would react. The Department of Justice noted the case began with a criminal complaint, which is an accusation, not a final verdict. Even so, the facts outlined in public filings and corroborated by testing give the government a clear path to argue he meant to spark an emergency response.

Why A “Harmless” Hoax Still Hits Hard

Congressional offices do not gamble with white powder. Staff call police. Hazard teams show up. Buildings slow or close. The reason is history. After the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001, white-powder scares surged. By 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported roughly 178 white-powder cases per year, down from thousands right after 2001, but still a steady drain on time and money. Post-2001, federal agents also probed about 1,000 possible white-powder events from 2007 through early 2009, and postal inspectors answered thousands more reports.

An Illinois man, Matthew G. Unglesbee, is facing federal charges for allegedly sending threatening letters containing a white substance to four members of Congress. https://t.co/vfK0SB6ReA

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 27, 2026

These events often end with no toxins found. Yet the harm is real. People lose hours. Offices shut down. Taxpayers fund responses that crews cannot skip, because the one time you assume it is nothing could be the time it is not. That is why federal law treats hoaxes as serious crimes. Common sense says you do not send fake threats to elected officials and then shrug off the cost and fear you caused.

How Prosecutors May Frame The Case

Prosecutors will likely say the combination of white powder, taunting notes, and congressional targets shows clear intent to frighten. They can point to the return-address details and the reported admission as anchors for identity and purpose. They can also cite the practical effects: alarms pulled, teams dispatched, and work disrupted. Defense counsel may focus on the lack of an explicit threat in the quoted notes, but courts have upheld hoax convictions when context made the message menacing enough to force emergency action.

For many readers, the core test is simple: Did the sender know the letters would look like a biological threat and cause a serious response? The reported statements about choosing salt because it resembled anthrax go straight to that point. If the court finds those statements reliable and the physical links solid, the case fits the pattern that federal agents and postal inspectors have battled for two decades: no poison, but real fear, real cost, and real consequences under federal law.