Mom may have been in on son's phone threat scam

Fox News:

When a North Carolina woman accused the federal government last week of abusing the Patriot Act to imprison her teenage son for allegedly making bomb threats, the mother's allegation caused quite an uproar, including calls to free 16-year-old Ashton Lundeby.

But a new report by Wired News suggests that, not only was the teenager an online superstar in rogue tech communities for his prank phone calls, but his mother may have known all along that the boy was conspiring with others to make bomb threats.

Lundeby, known online as "Tyrone," allegedly had progressed into selling his services as a threatmaker, charging schoolchildren from across the country $5 apiece to place threatening, Internet-based phone calls that would cause administrators to shut down their schools, Wired News reports.

"I heard the prank phone calls he made," his mother, Annette Lundeby, said in the Wired report. "They were really funny prank calls."

On top of that, the U.S. Attorney's office handling the case says her story about abuse of the Patriot Act was false.

On March 5, FBI agents took Ashton Lundeby into custody at his Oxford, N.C., home and placed him in a federal juvenile facility in Indiana, where he remains on charges he made bomb threats against Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and other schools.

Last week the boy's mother, Annette Lundeby, went on local TV and called her son's arrest a violation of the Constitution. She said Ashton, who'd been home-schooled and lived in a house full of American flags, was innocent, and that others had "hacked her son's IP address."

...

Ashton Lundeby was charged under a long-standing law against making threats, and "this charge is unrelated to the Patriot Act," the statement says.

...

There is more about his online exploits.

Mom may find herself in trouble is she provided false information to law enforcement about Ashton/Tyrone's activities. If he is found guilty, it does not appear that house arrest would be effective.