An 18-year-old man was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison for making nearly 400 false bomb threats and threats of violence to religious institutions, schools, universities and homes across the country, federal prosecutors said.
The man, Alan W. Filion, of Lancaster, Calif., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., in November to four counts of interstate transmission of threats, also known as swatting.
The threatening calls Mr. Filion made would often cause large deployments of police officers to a targeted location, the Justice Department said in a news release. In some cases, officers would enter people’s homes with their weapons drawn and detain those inside. In January 2023, Mr. Filion wrote on social media that his swats had often led the police to “drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies.”
Investigators linked Mr. Filion to over 375 swatting calls made in several states, including one that he made to the police in Sanford, Fla., saying that he would commit a mass shooting at the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque. During the call, he played audio of gunfire in the background. Mr. Filion was arrested in California in January 2024, and was then extradited to Florida to face state charges for making that threat.
Mr. Filion began swatting for recreation in August 2022 before making it into a business, the Justice Department said. The teenager became a “serial swatter” and would make social media posts about his “swatting-for-a-fee” services, according to prosecutors.
In addition to pleading guilty to the false threat against the mosque in Florida, Mr. Filion pleaded guilty in three other swatting cases: a mass shooting threat to a public school in Washington State in October 2022; a bomb threat call to a historically Black college or university in Florida in May 2023; and a July 2023 call in which he claimed to be a federal law enforcement officer in Texas and told dispatchers that he had killed his mother and would kill any responding officers.
Two lawyers representing Mr. Filion did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
Swatting has become a growing problem in recent years, especially as a way to target communities and politicians.
In January 2024, several federal law enforcement agencies said in a report that there were more than “100 separate threats to over 1,000 institutions across 42 states and the District of Columbia over a one-month period.”
One man in Washington State who pleaded guilty last year to making 20 swatting calls was sentenced to three years in prison. In August, two foreign citizens were charged with targeting over 100 people with swatting calls.
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