Former University of St. Thomas student gets 1 year in prison for making fake bomb threats

A former University of St. Thomas student who called in bomb threats to the school because he wasn't prepared for class has been sentenced to more than a year in federal prison.

Ray Persaud, 22, of Blaine, has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison and two years of supervised release after he called the school's main switchboard and claimed there was a bomb on campus, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday. 

Persaud, who was an undergrad at the University of St. Thomas at the time, called in fake bomb threats at the St. Paul campus three different times – on April 17, 2019, Aug. 20, 2019, and Sept. 17, 2019, the release says. 

Persaud, who pleaded guilty in September 2020, said he made the threats because he failed to finish his homework and wasn't prepared for class. 

The U.S. Attorney's Office says the threats caused "substantial fear and disruption" that led to the evacuation of campus buildings and a child care center, as well as rerouting traffic and prompted a full response from the university's public safety department. 

Persaud was convicted of one count of using an instrumentality of interstate commerce to maliciously make a threat to damage and destroy any building, by means of explosives.