SPRINGFIELD — A former superintendent of Chicopee schools was sentenced this week to a year of probation for lying to FBI agents who were investigating scores of threats sent via text to a candidate for the city’s police chief.

Lynn Clark, 53, who was a resident of Belchertown at the time of her arrest in April 2022, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of giving false statements. She was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office reported Wednesday.

Prosecutors said Clark sent 99 threatening messages to a candidate for Chicopee police chief. The city had been in the process of hiring a new chief in December 2021 when law enforcement learned that a candidate for the job was receiving threats intended to force him to withdraw his application, according to the criminal complaint.

“The victim received numerous text messages from unknown numbers containing threats to expose information that would cause the victim reputational harm,” the U.S. attorney’s office stated at the time. “As a result, the victim withdrew their application, and the city delayed the selection process.”

Police and federal investigators met with Clark over the course of several months. She falsely told officials she did not know who sent the messages, tried to dissuade them from pursuing the investigation any further, and falsely claimed to be a victim herself, saying she had received threatening text messages from unknown phone numbers when, in fact, she sent the messages to herself.

Additionally, over the course of the investigation, Clark falsely accused at least five innocent individuals of sending the threatening messages, including the victim’s fellow police officers, a city employee and her own son.

Investigators learned the fictitious phone numbers were purchased through a mobile app that Clark had downloaded, and that these accounts were used to send each of the threatening messages. After first denying these actions, Clark later admitted that she did send the messages and downloaded the app.

Prosecutors identified the victim only as Individual 1, and said Clark believed her position as superintendent could be negatively affected if Individual 1 become police chief.

“Clark felt Individual 1 had achieved many accomplishments based on Clark’s work; and Clark wanted Individual 1 to get ‘knocked down a peg,’” the criminal complaint stated.

“Former Chicopee School Superintendent Lynn Clark failed to lead by example when she falsely claimed she was a victim of a crime and then repeatedly lied to the FBI. In doing so, she caused unnecessary stress and reputational harm to those she accused, and wasted hundreds of hours of investigative resources,” Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in a statement. “Today’s sentence makes it clear that willfully lying to federal agents will result in serious consequences.”

Clark’s attorney, Jared Olanoff, previously told the Gazette the plea was a satisfactory resolution to what has been a difficult period for his client.

“It has been a trying time for her,” Olanoff said. “She has lost quite a bit already, but this is one step toward moving on from it.”