It appears the story about Ashton Lundeby I featured on Saturday falsely charges the federal government with malfeasance in his arrest.
Wired online tells the bigger story. (Important background detail: "[Mrs.] Lundeby confirmed that her son was known online as 'Tyrone,' a celebrity in a prank-calling community that grew late last year out of the trouble-making '/b/' board on 4chan."
And with that, now, you can understand "the rest of the story":
A former fan of Tyrone’s work helped lead the police to Lundeby’s son after the boy allegedly moved beyond pranks this year and began accepting donations from students eager to miss a day of school. In exchange for a little money, Tyrone would allegedly phone in a bomb threat that would shutter the donor’s school for a day.Something else bothers me about this story: Ashton/Tyrone is identified as a homeschooled kid! And while it is unclear whether his mother was fully aware of his bomb threats, she clearly was aware of his crude prank calling
“People would pay about five dollars, and they get to submit a number,” says Jason Bennett, a 19-year-old college student in Syndey, Australia. “It was getting way out of hand.”
Lundeby admits that her son received donations for his prank phone calls, but denies that he made bomb threats. She says her son was with her, coming home from church, at the time of the February 15 phone call that summoned a bomb squad and evacuated the mechanical engineering building at Purdue University in Indiana.
Now I feel even sicker than I did before.
See the Wired article for more of the awful details.
Thanks to Luke who brought this to my attention.
