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A disgruntled Minecraft gamer is believed to be behind a bomb hoax email sent to more than 400 schools and colleges.
Some students were evacuated from school and college buildings across the country on Monday after an email threatening to detonate a bomb if they refused to hand over cash was sent out.
The email appeared to come from gaming network VeltPvP – a server which allows users to compete in the game Minecraft – but the US company said that the account had been “spoofed”.
Carson Kallen, the US firm's 17-year-old CEO, told the BBC he suspected the hoax emails had been sent by a disgruntled Minecraft player in a bid to damage VeltPvP's reputation.
He said: “Everyone who plays it is between the ages of eight and 18 years old - it's all kids playing.
“Every now and then we have a little rebel who will try to do something bad like this. We've had stuff like this happen before but nothing this extreme.
“He was probably a player who got banned from our server and got mad. This is his way of trying to make us look bad.”
The email address requested payment to an email address that used the domain veltpvp.com but the website posted messages on Twitter denying any involvement.
In London, parents of pupils at Cardinal Road School in Feltham were asked to collect their children “as soon as possible” following the incident.
And students were temporarily evacuated from Kantor King Solomon High School in Ilford, in east London during the ”national threat“.
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In a statement, VeltPvP said: ”We've been being harassed by a group of cybercriminals that are trying to harass us in any way possible.
“We're extremely sorry for anyone who had to deal with this, but just know it's fake.”
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