Teen Bomb Hoaxer 'Tyrone' Sentenced to 22 Months Time-Served

A North Carolina teenager who phoned in hoax bomb threats to colleges, middle schools and FBI offices around the country for the amusement of a live internet audience was headed for release Monday after near two years held without bail.

Known online as “Tyrone,” Lundeby was a celebrity in a prank-calling community that grew in 2008 out of the trouble-making “/b/” board on 4chan. Using the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) conferencing software Ventrilo, as many as 300 listeners would gather on a server run by Lundeby to listen to him and other amateur voice actors make often crude and racist phone calls.

For some of the calls, Lundeby accepted PayPal donations from students eager to miss a day of class. In return for a little money, he would phone in a bomb threat that would shutter the donor’s school for a day.

The internet afterwards Raleigh

Lundeby's 2009 arrest stoked widespread outrage on the internet afterwards Raleigh, North Carolina's WRAL-5 reported on the case, noting that the boy is a patriotic homeschooled student with an American flag bedspread. The station reported incorrectly that Lundeby was being held without any legal rights on the authority of the 2001 USA Patriot Act.