Lundeby, known as ‘Tyrone’ on 4chan when he was 16, was pretty much a prank calling professional. He dabbled in typical prank calls (to hundreds of listeners’ enjoyment) but made his coin in fake bomb threats. Students who really didn’t want to go to class would transfer money to him via PayPal so he could phone in fake bomb threats to shut down the school. Schools Lundeby affected include Purdue University, the University of North Carolina, Clemson University, Florida State University, Boston College and FBI offices in Colorado and Louisiana.
When the police finally caught him, he was charged as an adult in a federal court and held without bail. Which, well, really sucks for an immature kid making an immature mistake committing an immature prank (with admittedly real world consequence). Prosecutors eventually worked with his attorneys to bring the sentence down to his time served plus three years supervised probation and he finally gets to go out and enjoy the rest of his youth.
I guess the lesson here is no matter how cool the idea of missing school because of a bomb threat is, it’s definitely not worth the jail time. So stay in school kids! To his credit, Ashton Lundeby sounds like he learned his lesson:
“I’m definitely not getting into any more trouble,” he said. “I have a lot of things I want to do with my life. I regret everything I did. If I could change anything, I would. But everyone makes mistakes. At 16, I made a pretty big one. I have an education that I need to get. I have a life to move on to.”
Prank calling! Fun until someone goes to juvie. [South Bend Tribune via Wired]
Travis New
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 2:20 AMAs much as it was a harsh sentence some people(not saying me cos I would fine exciting(yeah I’m out there)) could be traumatized by a bomb threat. There a lot of weak minded individuals who break under a little stress so I would imagine a bomb threat would be a lot of stress for some people.
Hopefully he is genuinely remorseful :)
Pat Cahill
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 12:43 PMStressing weak minded people or not, finding it exciting or not, lets keep in mind that he tied up fire, police and other emergency services (who I assure you don’t find it exciting searching a school for something that might shred them to death) for hours and kept them away from, you know, ACTUAL emergencies.
Calling in a bomb threat isn’t a prank call, that’s asking if Amanda Hugginkis is there.
My friends who work in the Emergency Services say the longer the search takes the worse the worry is and especially if you don’t find it you worry you missed it and have sent innocent people into harm. That is until the call comes in that it was a hoax from a kid who didn’t want to do gym.
But hey maybe he can reflect on that while his legs are trapped in a car wreck and he’s waiting for Fire & Rescue to finish searching the local high school for something that doesn’t exist.
Good to imagine karma working like that?
Now imagine it was one of your innocent friends or family in the car trapped and waiting while this kid took money and apparently found what he was doing morally OK because it was a “prank call”.