A Harvard student trying to get out of a final exam admitted to the FBI that he sent a bomb threat that forced the university to evacuate multiple buildings and rattled the campus, federal officials said Tuesday.
Instead of going home for winter break, 20-year-old Eldo Kim was arrested Tuesday and held overnight on federal bomb hoax charges. He is scheduled to appear in US District Court on Wednesday, according to US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz's office.
The FBI said Kim sent an anonymous e-mail to Harvard officials, campus police, and others at about 8:30 a.m. Monday warning of "shrapnel bombs" in four buildings.
"[Be] quick for they will go off soon," the message warned, according to the FBI, which said Kim admitted to adding the word "shrapnel" because it sounded more dangerous.
The threat prompted the university to evacuate three buildings in Harvard Yard -- Emerson, Sever, and Thayer halls -- as well as the massive Science Center nearby, just as the 9 a.m. exams were beginning. Coming eight months after the Boston Marathon attack, the threat drew a swarm of law enforcement agencies and attracted international media attention.
The search for possible explosives disrupted the Cambridge campus for much of the day and forced an array of exams to be postponed.
According to an FBI affidavit, Kim used a disposable, temporary e-mail address and a temporary Internet Protocol to send his warning -- with the subject line "bombs placed around campus" -- to two university officials, Harvard police, and the student newspaper.
But university officials determined by the end of the day that Kim had used a Harvard wireless network to create the secretive IP, prompting an FBI agent and a campus police officer to interview him in his dorm Monday night.
The agent, Thomas M. Dalton, said Kim admitted to authoring the hoax, picking Emerson Hall -- the site of his exam -- and three other targets.
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