In one of the prolific swatting circumstances ever prosecuted, a teenage “serial swatter” pleaded responsible Wednesday to creating hoax threats to colleges, non secular establishments and authorities officers about mass shootings and bombings throughout the nation.
Alan Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded responsible to 4 counts of creating interstate threats, the U.S. Department of Justice stated. Filion faces a most penalty of 5 years in jail for every cost, federal prosecutors stated.
Between August 2022 and January, Filion made greater than 375 swatting and menace calls, together with calls during which he claimed to have put bombs in place, threatened to detonate bombs or perform mass shootings, officers stated.
He turned a “serial swatter” for revenue and leisure, courtroom paperwork stated. Prosecutors stated he turned swatting right into a enterprise by promoting his swatting providers on social media for a payment.
Authorities stated he was chargeable for lots of of swatting incidents all through the nation together with in Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Louisiana Washington and Texas.
Filion was 16 when he made a lot of the calls that focused excessive colleges, schools, authorities officers, non secular institutions and the houses of FBI brokers, prosecutors stated.
“He precipitated profound worry and chaos,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco stated within the assertion.
Attorneys listed for Filion in courtroom information couldn’t instantly be reached Wednesday afternoon.
In January 2023, Filion was extradited to Florida from California after swatting a mosque months earlier in Sanford, Florida. Prosecutors stated Filion focused the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque and threatened to commit a mass capturing. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI tracked the teenager’s posts on Telegram providing up his swatting providers, in addition to recordings of swatting calls.
In the incident in Sanford, Filion claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails, prosecutors stated. Filion stated he was going to imminently “commit a mass capturing” and “kill everybody,” prosecutors stated.
“He claimed in a Jan. 19, 2023, on-line submit that his ‘first’ swatting was like ‘2 to three years in the past’ and that ‘6-9 months in the past [he] determined to show it right into a enterprise,’” prosecutors stated, noting Filion made posts on social media promoting his providers.