A travel nurse who was on vacation in Europe and then disappeared was among several Americans who were targeted by a cyber attack in 2015, federal prosecutors said Friday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington said prosecutors filed charges against the former nurse, who is married to a German citizen, in a new criminal complaint that also names a German-American woman who was at the time working for a travel agency.
The two had a home in Munich, Germany, where the former flight nurse had lived since 2015, according to the indictment.
The complaint says a woman named Rebecca F. Johnson, who worked at a travel company called Expedia, was at a Munich hotel with the German-born woman when the attack occurred.
The woman, who was married to the German citizen and has not been identified, was in a hotel room with Johnson when she received a text message that said, “We’re under attack.”
A spokesman for the office declined to comment on the case.
The alleged attack came on a trip that Johnson had planned with her husband, according a search warrant affidavit filed by U.s. prosecutors.
Prosecutors say Johnson and the woman met at the Munich hotel, where they discussed their plans to meet in a nearby town, where Johnson then left her husband in the hotel room.
The search warrant said Johnson went to a McDonald’s restaurant where she had been working as a cashier.
She returned home and then was in the restroom of a local hotel.
The woman texted her husband that she had met someone who said she was going to get attacked and that they needed to get her back to her hotel.
Johnson was then seen at a restaurant where her husband worked, the search warrant says.
Johnson returned to her husband’s house at around 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2015.
Investigators said she told them she had never been attacked before.
The next day, her husband reported Johnson missing.
She told investigators she had seen the two in a dark alley behind a bar near her home.
Johnson’s husband later said Johnson was the only one who had been in the alley.
“I thought she was a tourist,” he told police, according the search warrants.
Investigators interviewed Johnson and her husband on Aug 21 and Aug 23, 2015, and found no evidence that Johnson was a victim of the cyber attack, prosecutors said.
The case was sealed after prosecutors said Johnson and Johnson’s employer, Travelers World, were not notified of the attack.
The German-speaking woman told investigators Johnson told her she was pregnant when she was abducted, according.
The indictment alleges that Johnson told investigators her employer and Johnson had been talking about the attack and they were planning to return to Munich to talk about it.
Johnson has been charged with two counts of attempted abduction and one count of making a false statement to law enforcement.
She is being held without bond.