School of the Osage reports getting fake bomb email sent nationwide

A school in the Lake of the Ozarks area reported that it received one of the thousands of emails claiming that a bomb was in their building.

The school posted on Facebook at 5:09 p.m. Thursday that a middle school staff member received an email near the end of the school day, threatening them and telling them to pay $20,000 in bitcoin. If the recipient did not pay, the email threatened to set off a bomb inside the building.

The district said in the post that law enforcement searched the school after dismissal but found no bomb.

Several other places in mid-Missouri received the message. The Columbia Police Department said it had received multiple reports of businesses getting the email, but did not specify how many. Bothwell Regional Health Center in Sedalia briefly went into lockdown around 2 p.m. due to the email, but security staff lifted it less than an hour later.