2024-06-30T21:22:34.836ZPedestrians walk near a Northeastern University sign on the school's Boston campus in 2019. (Rodrique Ngowi/AP) A former Northeastern University employee was convicted Friday of staging a hoax explosion at the school’s Boston campus in 2022 and lying to federal law enforcement officers about the incident.Jason Duhaime, then the director of the university’s Immersive Media Lab, reported to authorities in September 2022 that he was injured by an exploding package sent to campus with a rambling note threatening the media lab.The incident canceled classes and led a police bomb squad to sweep the campus for other suspicious packages, The Washington Post reported at the time. But federal investigators charged Duhaime weeks later with fabricating the threat after finding no evidence of an explosion and discovering a “word-for-word” copy of the threatening letter on his laptop.On Friday, a jury found Duhaime, 46, guilty of one count of conveying false information about an explosive device and two counts of making false statements to federal law enforcement, the Justice Department said. Each charge carries a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.“Bomb hoaxes like the one the defendant fabricated here have real life consequences,” acting U.S. attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement. “Communities are put in fear, law enforcement personnel are diverted from other important duties and there are significant financial repercussions.”Scott Lauer, an attorney for Duhaime, declined to comment Sunday.On Sept. 13, 2022, Duhaime reported to Northeastern police that he and a student had brought several plastic cases from a mail area to the media lab, court documents say. Duhaime said sharp objects flew out of one of the cases when he opened it, injuring his hands. He also said he found a “violent note” inside the case.But officers soon found inconsistencies in Duhaime’s account, charging documents say. An investigating officer who arrived that evening found the case and the letter undamaged, without any trace of explosive chemicals. The case was empty.Duhaime reported that he had been hurt and showed the officer several “small, superficial marks or bruises” on his forearms, according to court documents. His long-sleeve shirt, however, appeared undamaged.Duhaime also said he had collected another similar case from the mail room, leading officers to evacuate the building and bring in investigators from the Boston Police Department and the FBI. But that case was empty, and officers found no sign of the debris or sharp objects that Duhaime had described erupting from the first case.Investigators also searched Duhaime’s work computer and found an identical copy of the threatening note stored in an auto-save folder. The document had been created on the same day Duhaime reported the bomb threat, according to court documents.The note criticized the lab’s work and accused it of “trying to change the fabric of the ideology of a people” by working on virtual reality projects. (The Immersive Media Lab researches augmented reality and virtual reality.)“In the case you got today we could have planted explosives but not this time!!!” the note said, according to court documents.Interviewed multiple times by federal investigators, Duhaime maintained that he was telling the truth about the incident, according to court documents. Duhaime also denied staging the situation in an interview with the Boston Globe, in which he called the experience “traumatic.”“They need to catch the guy that did this,” Duhaime told the Globe.Duhaime was no longer associated with Northeastern by the time he was criminally charged, the university previously said. He is scheduled to be sentenced in October.