Teen admits to fake bomb threats

Plea ends contentious court fight over charges.

October 20, 2010|By JEFF PARROTT, Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND — A North Carolina teen who has been detained here for the past 20 months pleaded guilty Wednesday to making fake bomb threats against Purdue University’s Lafayette and Fort Wayne campuses.

Ashton Lundeby, 17, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to violate federal laws by using false information to threaten to "kill, injure or intimidate individuals."

In a plea agreement, Lundeby admitted to using the Internet to place the fake bomb threat calls, and to charging other Internet users money to watch and listen live to how police and school officials responded to the threats. Using the screen name "Tyrone," Lundeby also made the threats to the University of North Carolina, Clemson University, Florida State University, Boston College, a high school, a middle school and FBI offices in Louisiana and Colorado, according to his guilty plea.

Lundeby, who was charged in federal court as an adult, faces up to five years in prison. But during a hearing Wednesday, assistant U.S. attorney Ken Hays told U.S. District Judge Robert L. Miller that the government will support a sentence at the lower end of the guideline range, once that range is calculated by probation officials.

The teen initially had been held at St. Joseph County’s Juvenile Justice Center and is now being detained at the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center. His Merrillville attorney, Alison Benjamin, asked Miller to sentence him before Nov. 24, when Lundeby will turn 18 and could be transferred to an adult county jail.

Miller said that would shorten the amount of time the government has to object to the probation department’s sentencing guideline calculations, should it want to do so. Hays said he didn’t object to that, but the probation officer who will be assigned the case told him it would be very difficult for her to meet the Nov. 24 deadline.

Still, Miller asked her to try, setting sentencing for Nov. 23.

Hays said the government will support a lower sentence because Lundeby was accepting responsibility by pleading guilty. But he and his mother, Annette Lundeby, didn’t start out that way.

The case sparked outrage among civil libertarians across the Internet when Annette Lundeby claimed the government had arrested her son under the Patriot Act and was denying him his due process rights, such as the right to be formally charged in a reasonable period of time.

U.S. attorney David Capp denied the charge, saying the teen had received several court hearings and had been charged with the crime.

Later, she and her son filed a flurry of motions attempting to have the charges dismissed, claiming that the federal government had no authority to charge a minor with a crime. When Miller denied their request for release on bail, they appealed, unsuccessfully, to the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, in Chicago.

Early on, the Lundebys had his court-appointed public defender removed from the case, arguing he was ineffectual. Lundeby represented himself for months before hiring Benjamin’s firm in February.

Staff writer Jeff Parrott:
jparrott@sbtinfo.com
574-235-6320

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