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"<p>\n\tA former Agwam, Mass., man has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for the illegal possession of the toxin ricin and for threatening a prosecutor.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tMichael Crooker pleaded guilty to the charges in March. He has been in federal custody since 2004 after his arrest on charges of using the mail to transport a firearm, Boston.com reports. When Crooker&#39;s apartment was searched, agents found what appeared to be a weapons lab along with castor and abrus seeds, which are the sources of ricin and abrin poisons.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tProsecutors allege that Crooker later sent a letter to an assistant U.S. attorney in which he stated the name of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tU.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock sentenced Croocker on Monday to the maximum of 15 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tRicin can be made from the waste material left over from processing castor beans in the form of a powder, mist, pellet or to be dissolved in a water or weak acid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<br />\n\t<br />\n\tRicin was experimented with in the 1940s as a possible warfare agent. It may have been used as a warfare agent in the 1980s in Iraq and more recently by terrorist organizations. Accidental exposure to ricin is very unlikely and it would most likely take a deliberate act to make the toxin and use it to poison people.</p>\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://bioprepwatch.com/stories/510507992-mass-man-sentenced-for-ricin-possession>