A 20-year-old Chicago man is facing federal charges after he allegedly called a cruise ship in December and claimed he was on board with a bomb, threatening to blow it up while the vessel carried passengers back from the Bahamas. Daquan Lamont Smith was indicted on the charge of interstate transmission of a threat, and if convicted, he faces up to five years in federal prison.
According to BNO News, Smith allegedly called the ship on December 6, 2025, and told whoever answered, “I'm coming from, I'm coming. I'm on the cruise boat coming from Bahamas that left two days ago, and I'm letting you guys know now I have a bomb on the boat and I want to blow it up.” The outlet reports Smith is accused of threatening to blow up the ship, and the FBI investigated the case. The specific cruise line or vessel involved has not been named in court filings, according to the same report.
The federal indictment was filed in Orlando, per the indictment. A status conference in the case was scheduled for September 8, 2026, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel C. Irick in the Orlando division of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Why the Case Landed in a Florida Courtroom
Smith's alleged call targeted a ship sailing out of the Bahamas. Port Canaveral set an all-time record in fiscal year 2025 by handling 8.602 million cruise passenger movements across 1,038 ship calls, making it the top cruise port in North America by passenger volume, according to the Royal Caribbean Blog. The Bahamas and Caribbean region remains the world's primary cruise market, with roughly 14.98 million passengers in 2024 and the Port of Nassau alone hosting over 6 million passengers in 2025, per data cited by PhotoAiD.
The available materials support reporting some criminal activity to the FBI under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but do not establish that the law requires reporting all security threats, suspicious activity and serious crimes. The available materials, including figures compiled by Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, P.A., do not establish specific crime totals for full-year 2025 or the second quarter of 2026.
What Prosecutors Must Prove Under the Threat Statute
Smith was charged with interstate transmission of a threat, a federal offense carrying statutory penalties of up to five years in federal prison. The available case materials do not detail the statute's elements, applicable fines or restitution, or the true-threat standard.
The case fits a broader pattern of recent federal enforcement in the region, though the materials cited here do not establish the additional cases described below.
A Familiar Scramble for Cruise Security Teams
Phoned-in bomb threats against cruise operations aren't unique to this case. In a separate incident on March 30, a phoned-in bomb threat locked down San Diego's B Street Cruise Terminal for roughly two hours, trapping passengers on board while K-9 bomb-sniffing units searched the facilities and vessels, as Hoodline previously reported. That incident illustrates the lockdown and canine-sweep response that occurred there.
Smith's indictment does not resolve which cruise line or specific ship received the alleged threat call, a detail that remains absent from the court filings described in the BNO News report. The provided materials do not establish the case's status after the scheduled status conference.
