MILLINOCKET (AP) – A bomb threat at a supermarket on Wednesday appears to be part of a nationwide scam targeting banks and retailers, police said.

The state police tactical squad was called to the Hannaford supermarket after an employee arrived to find the doors locked and employees and customers sitting inside in a circle, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

It turns out a bomb threat was called into the store, McCausland said.

“It was an extortion case in which they were told to wire money or there would be a bomb that would be detonated in the store,” he said.

At 11:30 a.m., about 40 customers and employees were released from the store unhurt. The store remained closed to allow state police time to sweep the store with bomb-sniffing dogs and for employees to receive counseling.

The caller warned of a bomb and told employees to lock the front doors, to make everyone sit in a circle and to send an undisclosed sum of money through Western Union, said Caren Epstein, Hannaford’s spokeswoman in Scaborough.

The customers and employees remained in the circle until police entered the supermarket and told them to evacuate, Epstein said.

There have been similar threats across the country, including one Tuesday in Newport, R.I., in which store employees wired $10,000 to the caller.

FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said the Rhode Island threat appeared related to a plot in recent days targeting banks and stores near Phoenix, Detroit, Salt Lake City and Philadelphia. The FBI was alerted to the Millinocket incident, as well.

“At this point, there’s enough similarities that we think it’s potentially one person or one group,” Kolko said from Washington.

Similar threats have also been received at stores in Kansas and Virginia.

The Millinocket incident was the first involving a Hannaford supermarket, Epstein said. All of Hannaford’s more than 150 stores across the Northeast have been warned about the scam, the spokeswoman said.

Epstein said the company found no fault with the way the incident was handled. “The store manager did everything that we would have expected him to do,” she said. The Millinocket store was to reopen today.

AP-ES-08-29-07 1705EDT

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