Olutosin Oduwole

A Nigerian student in the U.S., Olutosin Oduwole, 22, has been charged with making terrorist threat. He is being held on a $1.1 million bail. He also faces unrelated theft and fraud charges that have kept him in jail since his arrest on Friday. The charges accuse him of selling an M-16 machine gun online, but failing to ship it to the buyer after payment. Oduwole is a student at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and president of the local chapter of the Iota Phi Theta fraternity of the school. He is also described as an aspirant rapper.

A gun dealer alerted U.S. Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of Oduwole's overly impatience of receiving purchased semiautomatic weapons. Police arrested him after they found a handwritten note in his car demanding payment to a PayPal account and threatening "if this account doesn't reach $50,000 in the next 7 days then a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting will occur at another highly populated university. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!". VT stands for "Virginia Tech", an American university where a student in two separate attacks on April 16, 2007, killed 32 people, wounding 25 before committing suicide.

A loaded gun was found in Oduwole's campus apartment during the execution of a search warrant by police. Police also seized a photograph of Oduwole flashing gang signs, a camcorder and two passports, one U.S. and the other Nigerian.

Oduwole's mother and his friends describe his ordeal as a misunderstanding that might be related to the lyrics of his rap songs which are sometimes violent. During his brief court appearance, his lawyer, Patricia Dennis entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville is 20 miles northeast of St. Louis, Missouri and has an enrollment of 13,500 students.