Former St. Thomas student sentenced to prison for hoax bomb threats

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An Indo-Caribbean man was sentenced in Minnesota Feb. 9, 2021, to prison for hoax bomb threats.

Ray Ghansham Persaud, 22, a former St. Thomas student, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for calling in a bomb threat to the University of St. Thomas on September 17, 2019. Persaud, who pleaded guilty on September 22, 2020, was sentenced by Judge Eric C. Tostrud in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Persaud’s defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed with the court, on three separate occasions – April 17, 2019; August 20, 2019; and September 17, 2019, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Minnesota.

According to those documents, Persaud, who was at the time an undergraduate student at the University of St. Thomas, called in to the University’s main switchboard and falsely stated that there was a bomb on the St. Paul campus.

The bomb threats caused substantial fear and disruption to the University, including the evacuation of campus buildings and a childcare center, re-routing of traffic on nearby streets, and a full response by the University’s Public Safety personnel, the press release noted.

Persaud admitted that on the dates he called in the bomb threats he had failed to complete his homework and was unprepared for class.

Persaud is from Blaine, Minn. He was convicted on one count for “Using an instrumentality of interstate commerce to maliciously make a threat to damage and destroy any building, by means of explosives.”

Apart from the prison sentence, Persaud also faces two years of supervised release.