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Friday, July 10, 2009

Ind. Courts - "Teen to be tried in bomb threats"

Some quotes from this story today by Anne Blythe of the Raleigh NC News & Observer:

Federal prosecutors say a teenager from Oxford is a celebrity in an online prankster world in which conspirators, for nominal fees, make bomb threats to high schools, universities, federal offices and other places and then broadcast the results live to a select audience.

In indictments issued this week by a federal grand jury in Indiana, prosecutors accuse Ashton Lundeby, 16, of making or helping make bomb threats in at least a dozen states from his home computer since last year. In some cases, prosecutors say, Lundeby and unnamed co-conspirators would collect fees to lodge bomb threats at high schools and middle schools with the goal of closing school for the day.

Federal prosecutors call it "Swatting," the act of making a false emergency report that frequently prompts responses from special weapons and tactics, or SWAT, teams. They say Lundeby and the co-conspirators used pseudonyms and elaborate computer gaming techniques to disguise their voices and identities, then transmit threats and watch live through video surveillance and webcams as law enforcement teams responded.

Lundeby, a homeschooled boy arrested March 5 in his Oxford home and taken to Indiana, is being tried as an adult in federal court, though under federal law he is considered a juvenile. He is scheduled to go before a federal magistrate in Indiana today. * * *

According to the indictments, Lundeby is accused of making a bomb threat to Purdue University on Feb. 15 and to Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne on Jan. 31. He also is accused of conspiring to make bomb threats and conveying false information over the Internet and telephone lines from mid-2008 to March 6.

Here is a July 8th story from Wired.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 10, 2009 09:43 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts