A 16-year-old Oxford, N.C., boy has been indicted in federal court in connection with a series of bomb threats made at Indiana and other universities across the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana said.

According to a statement released on Wednesday, Ashton Lundeby has been indicted as an adult on three counts: conspiring, from mid-2008 through March 6, 2009, to make bomb threats and conveying false information through interstate commerce; with a substantive violation for making a bomb threat on Jan. 31 of this year against Indiana University/Purdue University at Fort Wayne; and with a substantive violation for making a bomb threat against Purdue University on Feb. 15.

Lundeby was arrest by the FBI at his home in Oxford on March 6, pursuant to a juvenile criminal warrant filed in the Northern District of Indiana, and a federal search warrant executed at that time, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He was ordered detained and remains in federal custody. The U.S. Attorney’s Office subsequently sought a motion to proceed against Lundeby as though he were an adult and the U.S. District Court in South Bend granted that motion.

“The indictment alleges an extensive conspiracy involving Lundeby and unnamed other individuals to transmit bomb threats through the Internet,” the statement said. “Lundeby, often using the pseudonym ‘Tyrone,’ and his co-conspirators utilized voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) software to set up large-scale conference calls across the Internet. In addition, on-line computer gaming accounts were utilized so that participants could listen and observe the police response in real-time. Lundeby and his associates charged fees to listen and observe. Lundeby and his associates used other software to disguise their true identities and the origin of the calls.”

“Lundeby and other co-conspirators would often target institutions that utilized web-based video surveillance cameras,” the statement also said. “They would log into those cameras, call in a bomb threat, and watch the police response in real time. This illegal conduct is known as ‘swatting,’ making false reports of an emergency to a police department for the purpose of causing a law enforcement response to the non-existent emergency. Lundeby conducted this activity from his personal computer at his home in Oxford, N.C.”

The indictment specifically alleges that on Jan. 31 Lundeby and others directed calls to authorities stating that a bomb had been placed on the IU-PU campus; that on Feb. 15 he and others directed multiple calls to Purdue University, stating that bombs had been placed on that campus, with a follow-up call made by a co-conspirator claiming to have seen someone place devices on computers in the mechanical engineering building; and that on March 3 members of the conspiracy once again targeted Purdue University, this time claiming that a person in the computer science building was armed with a firearm, the statement said.

Other schools targeted, the statement said: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Florida State University; Clemson University; and Boston College.

In addition, the statement said, the conspirators made bomb threats to FBI offices in Pueblo, Colo., and in Monroe, La.; and at high schools in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kansas, Connecticut, and Georgia.

“The indictment was the result of an extensive investigation by the FBI, the FBI Cybercrime Squad based in Indianapolis, the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor’s Office, and the Purdue University Police Department,” the statement said.

“To properly investigate a crime of this scope and magnitude requires sophisticated technical expertise as well as old-fashioned police work,” aid U.S. Attorney David Capp.

“This type of activity on the Internet will not be tolerated,” Capp added. “No matter where you are located, conduct like this will be thoroughly investigated and, where appropriate, presented for indictment.”

Posted 7/9/2009