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A Virginia woman has been accused of embarking on an escalating months-long campaign of harassment against the out Apple CEO.
A California judge has awarded Tim Cook a restraining order against a Virginia woman accused of stalking the out Apple CEO, trespassing on his property, and threatening to burn down his Palo Alto home.
In the restraining order application, filed last week in the Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, the 45-year-old woman is alleged to have demonstrated "erratic, threatening and bizarre" behavior, including emails featuring images of loaded handguns she claimed to have purchased.
Cook's lawyers told the judge in their filing that they believe the woman from McLean, Va., is armed and in the Bay Area with intentions of returning to Cook's home or to "locate him otherwise shortly."
The court, which found the threat against Cook credible, prohibited the woman from possessing a firearm in addition to having any interaction with Apple employees, including its CEO. She is also banned from all Apple properties, and any violation of the restraining order can result in both jail time and a $1,000 fine.
Cook was first alerted to the woman's activities in late 2020 when she began tagging him in tweets where she claimed to be the CEO's wife and that he was the father of her two children. Then, between October and mid-November 2020, she sent him more than 200 emails that became increasingly "threatening and highly disturbing," per the filing.
Apple attorneys allege that along with threatening messages, the woman opened a series of fraudulent corporations with what they called "highly offensive corporate names" in California, New York, and Virginia with Cook listed as a corporate officer and using his home address.
The woman then began appearing at Cook's home following an email saying she was planning to apply to be his roommate. She arrived at his Palo Alto property demanding to see him but was turned away by his security team. A month later, the woman returned to Cook's home and entered the property before police arrived, at which point she allegedly told officers she was staying in the area and "could get violent."
Following that incident, the woman's emails and tweets continued, including threats that she would burn down Cook's property so he should leave his home.
A hearing to look further into the matter has been set for March 29.
