A New Jersey man with a long history of mailing antisemitic messages to people and businesses in the New York area was arrested on Nov. 15 for allegedly mailing a hateful cartoon to a White Plains real estate firm.
Nikolay Levinson, 41, was accused of two counts of mailing a threatening communication, in U.S. District Court, White Plains. He consented to detention.
A prosecutor noted in a similar case in July that Levinson’s conduct was a “continuation of an unrelenting pattern of mailing threatening, racist, antisemitic, and harassing letters to innocent victims since at least March 2014.”
But understanding Levinson’s motivations, the prosecutor said, is more complicated. His father is Jewish. The family left the Soviet Union to escape antisemitism when Levinson was seven. He lived in Israel for four years, and he speaks Hebrew.
In October, a White Plains real estate broker, and a colleague’s father who lives in Scarsdale, received identical cartoons depicting a black man pointing a gun at a white man wearing a yarmulke. The white man is holding a piece of paper with the words “Notice — Rent Hike — Effective immediately.” The caption, in large bold type, says “NIGGERS, JEWS … BAD NEWS!
The cartoons were mailed from a post office distribution center in Kearney, New Jersey. Investigators linked Levinson to the victims through text messages he exchanged with them after inquiring about a property in Yonkers.
Law enforcement officers were well aware of Levinson.
In 2014, while working as a corrections officer in Maryland, Levinson mailed dozens of racist and antisemitic letters to people in the New York area, according to the latest criminal complaint, including people who worked at banks and restaurants and for the New York Police Department.
In 2015, he sent threatening letters to an agent of a modeling business who had briefly employed him as his driver.
Levinson was detained, pending trial in New Jersey. When he was convicted in 2017 of making terroristic threats and stalking, he was sentenced to time served. Almost immediately, he resumed sending racist and antisemitic letters.
He was arrested again. Even while in prison, according to the new criminal complaint, Levinson got another inmate to send letters to 15 businesses in New York and New Jersey, containing Nazi symbols and the message, “Christian identity is here White Power.”
After he was released from prison in 2022, he sent threatening messages to a jewelry store, a law firm and other victims in the New York area. He was arrested again, sentenced to 26 months in prison.
On Sept. 14, Levinson was released from a New Jersey prison and placed under supervision. Weeks later, the White Plains real estate brokers received hate mail.
“Levinson is himself confused by what prompts him to continue sending the messages … which have resulted in his imprisonment for eight of the last 10 years,” defense attorney David Stern told a federal judge in July. “He wants to alter his behavior so that he no longer spends time in jail and no longer sends frightening messages to people with whom he has no issues.”
Levinson’s only hope, his attorney said, is mental health treatment.
Imprisonment does not deter Levinson, assistant prosecutor Jeffrey C. Coffman conceded in a July letter to the federal judge. But it does protect the public and makes it more difficult for Levinson to instill fear in the community.
