Ashton Lundeby, now 18, just spent the past 22 months in juvie. Why? Because he once acted as a gun, er, phone for hire. Kids would pay him and he would call their schools saying a bomb was planted there.
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]