in pre-trial custody. Lundeby pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge last October, admitting he staged bomb hoaxes from mid-2008 until his arrest in March of 2009. Victims included Purdue University, the University of North Carolina, Clemson University, Florida State University, Boston College, Hamden High School, West Hempfield Middle School, and FBI offices in Colorado and Louisiana.

“He’s being released as quickly as they can process the paperwork,” says Mary Hatton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Known online as “Tyrone,” Lundeby was a celebrity in a prank-calling community that grew in 2008 out of the trouble-making “/b/” board on 4chan. Using the VoIP conferencing software Ventrilo, as many as 300 listeners would gather on a server run by Lundeby to listen to him and other amateur voice actors make often crude and racist phone calls.

For some of the calls, Lundeby accepted PayPal donations from students eager to miss a day of class. In exchange for a little money, he would phone in a bomb threat that would shutter the donor’s school for a day.

“There are four bombs located in each wing of your school, Wing A, Wing B, Wing C and Wing D, throughout various lockers, bathrooms and receptacles throughout the building,” went one such call to Hamden High School in Connecticut.

“There’s 12 on each floor of the building. I will not tell you where they are located, but I will tell you they are very deadly, very explosive, and very big. They will explode at exactly 11 am when testing is done. I will destroy the entire campus, the entire school, and kill every student within as soon as testing is over. I hope you have a good morning and good night. All will be cleansed.”

Police began closing in on Tyrone after they traced a February 15, 2009 bomb threat against Purdue University to Lundeby’s Oxford, North Carolina home. The next month, they served his mother with a search warrant and arrested the then 16-year-old Lundeby. He was later charged as an adult in U.S. District Court in South Bend, Indiana — an unusual move against a juvenile in federal court — and ordered held without bail.

Lundeby faced between 41 and 51 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors joined with his defense attorney to request a lower sentence because of his young age at the time of the bomb hoaxes, and his cooperation against other suspects. In addition to time-served, U.S. District Judge Robert Miller Jr. on Monday ordered Lunday to serve three years of federal supervised release, and pay $29,000 in restitution.

Lundeby’s 2009 arrest stoked widespread outrage on the internet after Raleigh, North Carolina’s WRAL-5 reported on the case, noting that the boy is a patriotic homeschooled student with an American flag bedspread. The station reported incorrectly that Lundeby was being held without any legal rights on the authority of the 2001 USA Patriot Act.

See Also:

• Teen Ashton Lundeby Charged as an Adult for Bomb Threats
• Mom Loses Bid for Purdue Bomb Hoax Suspect’s Freedom
• Teenage Bomb Threat Suspect Was Internet Prank-Call Star
• Bloggers, TV, Go Nuts Over Misleading ‘Patriot Act’ Arrest Claim

Authors: Kevin Poulsen

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