NEW YORK - US authorities Wednesday arrested a man who allegedly plotted to bomb the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan, New York City, media reports said.

The suspect, identified as Quazi Mohammad Rezwanual Ahsan Nafis, was captured while he was trying to detonate what he believed to be a 1,000-pound bomb in front of the Fed building on Liberty Street, CBS said.

The public was never at actual risk, the report said.

According to CBS, Nafis, 21, arrived in the US in January. He had tried to recruit people in the US to help him conduct the terror attack.

He had also discussed possible targets in an online forum with al Qaeda sympathizers, including a senior US official and the New York Stock Exchange.

Nafis got in contact in the forum with an undercover agent, who provided him purported explosive and drove with him in a van loaded with the fake bomb to the Fed building Wednesday morning. The two then walked to a nearby hotel, where Nafis tried to detonate the bomb and was arrested, the report said.