by WorldTribune Staff, February 11, 2025 Real World News

A California teenager who admitted to making more than 375 “swatting” calls was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison.

Alan W. Filion, an 18-year-old Lancaster resident, admitted in a plea agreement to phoning in fake bomb and mass shooting threats to high schools, colleges and universities, religious institutions, and government officials across the United States, according to the Department of Justice.

Federal prosecutors said Filion intended for the calls to result in major emergency responses by law enforcement.

Prosecutors said some of the calls resulted in law enforcement officers being unavailable to respond to real emergencies, adding that some of the calls resulted in officers arriving at the reported location with their weapons drawn and detaining people.

In one social media post, made on Jan. 20, 2023, Filion claimed that he “usually get[s] the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies,” the DOJ said in a statement.

In the plea deal, Filion admitted he made the calls between August 2022 and January 2024.

“Filion became a serial swatter for both profit and recreation,” the DOJ said, citing an online post in which Filion said he had decided to turn the calls “into a business” in January 2023. “On several occasions, Filion placed posts on social media channels advertising his services and swatting-for-a-fee structure.”

Filion was arrested in connection with an incident in Florida on Jan. 18, 2024. In that case, he said he was going to “commit a mass shooting” and “kill everyone” — making the threat against a religious institution in Sanford while claiming to have pipe bombs, an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol and Molotov cocktails, prosecutors said.

The Justice Department detailed three other swatting calls which Filion pleaded guilty to.

• October 2022: Filion called a public high school in Washington, threatening to commit a mass shooting there and claiming to have planted bombs around the campus.

• May 2023: He called a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in Florida, claiming he planted bombs in the halls and ceiling of campus housing at the school which would detonate in about an hour.

• July 2023: He made a call to a local police department dispatch in Texas, falsely claiming to be a senior federal law enforcement officer and claiming to have killed the officers’ mother while threatening to kill any police officers who respond. He had provided an actual federal law enforcement officer’s home address to the dispatcher while making the false report.

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  California teen sentenced to 4 years in prison for nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, WorldTribune.com