Forty-Three-year-old Anton Dunn, who is to be sentenced in March, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for one count of transmitting threats. Being a new dad myself, this seems like a pretty light punishment to me. There’s no telling how Gerber’s sales will be affected by this for that matter. Thankfully no evidence has been found confirming the reality of the threat.  Michelle Nichols reports for Reuters:

Dunn posted his first video — in which he wore a black mask — on April 20, 2008, and followed up with a further two videos, posted on July 24 and July 27.

"Dunn further stated that it was "too late" to do anything about the poisoned baby food because it had already been shipped to consumers," he said.

Gerber doesn’t look to have done much to handle the situation from a reputation management standpoint. Searching for queries like "gerber, poison" (without the quotes) brings up various articles about Dunn, and some other things, but I haven’t found any official Gerber PR on the matter. A look through the press section of their website shows no trace of the matter either (even going back to July, when the videos surfaced).

This situation is bound to freak out a lot of people, and parents are going to want to be assured that their babies are not in danger. Gerber would be smart to at least get something official up on the site about the subject. Anything to set minds at ease, especially now that the story is back in the news.

Anton Dunn, 42, calling himself "Trashman," anonymously posted a series of videos of himself titled "gerbersbabyfoodalert" on YouTube. In one of the videos Dunn wears a black mask and says that Gerber employees acting at his direction have poisoned millions of bottles of Gerber baby food.

Dunn says that it is "too late" to do anything about the poisoned baby food because it has already shipped to consumers.

In another video on YouTube, Dunn claims that people acting at his direction have poisoned 5000 bottle of Gerber baby food with cyanide. In the video Dunn says the baby food was poisoned with the intent to kill black babies, but that white babies are also likely to die from the poisoning.

He goes on to say that he will "never be caught" and that attempts to trace his IP address will be useless, and that there is no point in contacting the FBI to arrest him.

Dunn, a resident of Manhattan is charged with one count of sending threats in interstate commerce and one count of falsely claiming to have tampered with a consumer product. Dunn faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Gerber has not found any evidence that its product has been tampered with. A spokesman for Gerber said its products are safe.

"We are aware of a recent posting on the Internet and believe this is a malicious hoax," said David Mortazavi. "The safety of Gerber and Nestle Nutrition products is our top priority. We are taking this issue seriously, and are cooperating fully with federal authorities."