Mescalero Woman Charged in Alamogordo Bank Bomb Hoax Nearly Two Years Later

A false bomb call that pulled at least five law enforcement agencies to Southwest Heritage Bank in Alamogordo has produced criminal charges against Margaret J. Cojo, 32, of Mescalero, nearly two years after investigators first concluded the August 2024 threat was fabricated.

Alamogordo Police received the call at approximately 1:09 p.m. on August 15, 2024, reporting two men on the second floor of the bank at 500 East 10th Street armed with a bomb. No such individuals were found. What was found, immediately, was the full weight of a regional law enforcement mobilization: personnel from the Alamogordo Police Department, the United States Border Patrol, the New Mexico State Police, the Otero County Sheriff's Office, the District Attorney's investigators, and AMR all converged on the branch before the preliminary investigation concluded the threat was a hoax.

That kind of response, replicated across Southern New Mexico by a single phone call, is precisely what false-threat statutes are designed to deter. Every agency that responds to a fabricated emergency is an agency not available for an actual one, and the operational disruption to the bank and surrounding block on East 10th Street that Thursday afternoon illustrates the cascading effect of a call that takes seconds to place.

Cojo's alleged conduct did not stop there. On March 4, 2025, a bomb threat was called into Ruidoso High School. "The threat resulted in an immediate lockdown of the school and a subsequent evacuation to the Ruidoso Convention Center," Ruidoso Police stated. Students were released to their parents at the convention center while trained professionals searched the premises; classes were suspended for the day. The school was cleared by 12:15 p.m. Ruidoso Police arrested Cojo on April 25, 2025, in connection with that incident, stating that "it was later determined that the call was a hoax that had been called in by Mrs. Cojo."

Together, the two cases paint a pattern: a bank branch shut down mid-afternoon in Alamogordo, a high school emptied in Ruidoso, and hundreds of students, employees, and law enforcement personnel disrupted across Otero and Lincoln counties by calls investigators say were never credible.

The decision to file charges in the Alamogordo bank case nearly two years after the incident signals that prosecutors in Southern New Mexico are not treating the delayed timeline as a barrier to accountability. For communities across the region, including those in Northern New Mexico where lab-town security awareness runs high, the cases offer a pointed reminder that hoax threats carry real legal exposure long after the moment passes.