Anthony Rae Sentenced for Serial Bomb Threats Across Three States

Anthony Rae, 25, of Stoughton, Massachusetts, has been sentenced to time served — approximately 17 months — for a nine-month spree of bomb threats targeting schools and colleges across three states. The threats, delivered via multiple email accounts, triggered evacuations, panic, and multi-state law enforcement coordination before Rae was finally apprehended.

Rae was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston by Judge Indira Talwani, who handed down the time-served sentence plus three years of supervised release. In October 2016, he pleaded guilty to five counts of sending bomb threats — charges that stemmed from a pattern of digital terror stretching from Chicago to Providence.

The campaign began in October 2014, when Rae created a Gmail account to send threats targeting an elementary school in Chicago, Illinois, and multiple public schools in Norwood, Massachusetts. He didn’t stop there. He later hacked into his mother’s Hotmail account and used it to send two additional bomb threats — this time to his own school, ITT Technical Institute in Norwood.

Even after law enforcement executed a search warrant at his residence in June 2015, seizing computers and other digital devices, Rae wasn’t done. The day after the raid, he accessed a shared computer in his apartment complex and sent a new threat — this time to Rhode Island College in Providence. The brazen act confirmed investigators’ suspicions: he wasn’t just lashing out — he was escalating.

Rae was arrested on June 19, 2015, initially charged in Massachusetts state court for the local threats. By October 2015, federal charges were filed. The investigation spanned jurisdictions, with critical work led by the FBI’s Boston Field Division, Chicago Police Arson Section, Norwood and Stoughton Police Departments, Rhode Island State Police Computer Crimes Unit, and campus police from both Rhode Island College and North Carolina State University.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordi de Llano prosecuted the case, with support from the Massachusetts Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council’s Cyber Crimes Unit and the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office. U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and FBI Special Agent in Charge Harold H. Shaw announced the sentencing, marking the end of a digital terror campaign that exploited fear, technology, and institutional trust.