QUINCY, Ill. — Federal agents arrested Matthew G. Unglesbee, 37, of Quincy on October 25 after he allegedly mailed four plain white envelopes containing a white granular powder and mocking handwritten notes to Illinois congressional offices. The criminal complaint, unsealed the next day in the Central District of Illinois, charges him with false information and hoaxes under 18 U.S.C. § 1038 and mailing threatening communications under 18 U.S.C. § 876(c).
Each count carries a maximum of five years in federal prison; the mailing statute can rise to 10 years when the communication targets certain federal officials. The envelopes, postmarked in Springfield on October 19 after being mailed from the Quincy area around October 16 or 17, carried Unglesbee’s own name and home address as the return address. Three went to the district offices of Democratic Representatives Mike Quigley in Chicago, Brad Schneider in Lincolnshire, and Jan Schakowsky in Skokie.
A fourth arrived on October 23 at the office of Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth. Each contained white granules. Three notes simply read “HA HA.” The senator’s letter carried the additional line “HAH enjoy the gift.”
Staffers never opened the envelopes. One office called 911 after a staffer felt powder inside and heard granules shift; other offices were already on alert from earlier suspicious mail. Hazardous-materials teams and FBI personnel trained in weapons of mass destruction responded to at least some of the sites. An anonymous tip that reached the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center on October 16 accelerated the case.
A person who overheard Unglesbee at a restaurant said he had already mailed suspicious substances to members of Congress and supplied his full name, address, and date of birth. Postal records later tied the envelopes to Quincy. On October 25, agents interviewed Unglesbee outside his mother’s residence at his request. According to the affidavit by FBI Task Force Officer Charis Hobbs, Unglesbee admitted mailing the four letters after hearing someone in a restaurant mention news reports of similar powder mailings earlier in the month.
He said he knew recipients would “take it serious” and that “hazmat come in white suits” because “anthrax is dangerous.” He told agents the powder was ordinary table salt chosen because it “kind of looks like” anthrax. He described the mailings as a joke while acknowledging that recipients would not know that and could perceive them as threats.
He denied any role in the broader wave of suspicious letters sent to lawmakers and election offices nationwide, stating he lacked the money to travel to other states. Preliminary testing by the Illinois State Laboratory Response Network found no chemical or biological toxins. Investigators still treated the mailings as serious because white powder has been a recurring intimidation tactic since the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. The appearance alone triggers evacuations, hazmat responses, and fear among staff who handle constituent mail.
U.S. Attorney Gregory M. Gilmore stated that “the use of the mail to threaten others, including the mailing of threatening substances, will not be tolerated.” A search of the residence also recovered a fifth empty, unmailed envelope addressed to a congressional office in Washington, D.C.
No additional federal charges related to that envelope have been publicly announced. Unglesbee’s prior convictions, documented in Illinois court records and local reporting, form a long pattern of conduct involving public officials, impersonation, and sexual offenses against a minor. In 2009, while living in Harrisburg, he pleaded guilty in Saline County to criminal sexual abuse of a minor between the ages of 13 and 17; the victim was 15.
He received 12 months of probation, 180 days in jail, and a requirement to register as a sex offender. In 2013 an Adams County jury convicted him of child sex offender loitering after he waited at a bus stop outside Quincy High School while minors remained in the building; he was sentenced to two years in prison. That same year he faced a conviction for false impersonation and solicitation, a Class 4 felony tied to impersonating a police officer.
In 2023 he pleaded guilty to threatening public officials, a Class 3 felony. He has also been convicted of violating sex-offender registration requirements, including failure to report annually. These are prior convictions, not allegations in the current federal case. At the time of his federal arrest he was also held on a separate state charge of harassment through electronic communications.
Local reporting has noted social-media activity, often posted through his mother’s Facebook account, in which Unglesbee urged viewers to vote Democratic, criticized President Donald Trump’s policies, and encouraged support for candidates including Juliana Stratton in an effort to flip the House. He attended a Stratton campaign event in Quincy days before his arrest.
He has also used the platform to complain about community attention to his sex-offender status, claiming it cost him employment, and to assert innocence in the 2009 case while blaming his former lawyer. Investigators have not established any political motive for the powder mailings. The four recipients identified by name are Democrats, but Unglesbee told agents he was copying news reports of similar letters rather than targeting any party.
Authorities have not linked him to the wider October 2026 wave of suspicious powder letters that reached dozens of congressional offices of both parties and numerous state election officials. Those other incidents remain under separate investigation; testing on them has also been negative for hazardous substances so far. Unglesbee appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas J.
Quivey on October 26 for an initial appearance and was ordered held pending a detention hearing scheduled for 3 p.m. on October 28 at the federal courthouse in Springfield. As of early morning on October 28, no public outcome of that hearing had been reported. The case is being investigated by the FBI Springfield Joint Terrorism Task Force with assistance from the Chicago Field Office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and local agencies.
The episode underscores both the vulnerability of congressional offices to low-cost scares that still require large emergency responses and the recurring presence in the criminal system of individuals with documented histories of threats and sex offenses. Federal prosecutors have signaled they will pursue the charges fully. Whether the detention hearing results in continued custody will help determine how quickly accountability follows for conduct that, even when the powder is only salt, still forces hazmat teams into the offices of elected representatives and their staffs.
