By WILL GREENLEE
PORT ST. LUCIE — A 57-year-old local man was arrested Tuesday after threatening to blow up a mortgage company in north Florida and saying he’d hire someone to “put a bullet” in a company representative’s head, according to records released Wednesday.
Portik was arrested and taken to the St. Lucie County Jail.

John Andrew Portik
John Andrew Portik, of the 8000 block of Kiawah Trace, who said he was calling for one of his employees, faces a felony threaten to discharge a destructive device charge following the incidents.
A Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigator Tuesday was dispatched to American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., where an employee took a call from a person identifying himself as Portik, a Jacksonville Sheriff’s report states. The call had been transferred from an office in Texas.
Portik was calling on behalf of one of his workers in Arizona and was “upset” that American Home Mortgage wasn’t assisting with the worker’s “mortgage problems,” the report states.
“The subject told (the mortgage employee) that he has been noted as crazy, owns a ‘skip-tracing’ company, suffers from PTSD, and is disabled,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s report states. “He said he had no problem ‘…blowing all of your (backsides) up.”
A Jacksonville investigator determined Portik called different numbers for the business, and in one case talked to a representative in India.
“I will hire someone in India to burn you and put a bullet in your head!” he said.
The Jacksonville sheriff’s investigator contacted St. Lucie County Sheriff’s officials, who went to Portik’s home.
Portik stated he was not getting anywhere with the people he was calling and stated “I ruffled some feathers!” Portik’s arrest affidavit states.
Asked how he “ruffled feathers,” Portik said he’s been a bill collector for 28 years and “knows the law and where the line is.”
He said he knows “how to get deep in their hearts to get an effect,” the affidavit states.