BOSTON — Federal authorities arrested a Massachusetts man on Wednesday for sending bomb threats to schools in four states over the past year that triggered evacuations and police deployments, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Anthony Rae, 24, is accused of sending threatening emails to a Chicago elementary school and several East Coast public schools and colleges including North Carolina State University, Rhode Island College, and ITT Technical Institute in Massachusetts, according to the release.
Many of the emails had the subject line “BOOM!!!” and a message that was a version of “I will bomb your school just for fun,” according to a filing with the U.S. District Court in Boston, where he was scheduled to face charges.
Rae could face 10 years in prison if convicted. It was not immediately clear if he had retained an attorney.
Prosecutors said Rae had initially been arrested by local authorities in June and charged with making several bomb threats in Massachusetts, but he was released pending trial.
“Despite the strict conditions of release, in September 2015, Rae created another Gmail account and threatened to bomb North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.,” according to the statement.
The arrest comes after a 22-year-old Connecticut man was sentenced to a year in prison for at least six “swatting” hoax calls to U.S. high schools and colleges threatening that bombers or active shooters were about to target the institutions.