Teen Behind Hundreds of Swatting Attacks Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges

In possibly the largest swatting lawsuit to ever beryllium prosecuted, an 18-year-old from Lancaster, California has pleaded blameworthy to national charges stemming from a nationwide spree of hundreds of shooting and weaponry menace hoaxes that sent constabulary scrambling to precocious schools, courthouses, and the homes of instrumentality enforcement officials.

Alan Winston Filion present faces a maximum punishment of 5 years successful situation for 4 counts of making interstate threats to injure the idiosyncratic of another, according to the United States Department of Justice.

Last year, Filion was arrested and extradited to Seminole County. At the time, Florida prosecutors charged Filion with 4 state-level felony counts stemming from a azygous incidental successful which, prosecutors allege, Filion told a Sanford Police Department dispatcher that helium was equipped with tube bombs and an AR-15 firearm and was walking into Masjid Al Hayy Mosque to termination everyone helium saw.

Filion, whom authorities judge operated online arsenic “Torswats,” has been successful jailhouse without a proceedings for astir a year. He entered a plea of not guilty.

The national charges announced connected Wednesday, on with interviews from radical connected to the investigation—and Filion himself—allege his swatting activities reached acold beyond Florida’s borders.

According to the plea agreement, betwixt astir August 2022 to January 2024 Filion made much than 375 swatting calls. These included incidents wherever helium claimed to person planted bombs oregon threatened to behaviour wide shootings astatine targeted locations that included spiritual institutions, precocious schools, and historically achromatic colleges and universities.

“This prosecution and today’s blameworthy plea reaffirm the Justice Department’s committedness to utilizing each tools to clasp accountable each idiosyncratic who endangers our communities done swatting and hoax threats,” lawman lawyer wide Lisa Monaco said successful a statement. “For good implicit a year, Alan Filion targeted spiritual institutions, schools, authorities officials, and different guiltless victims with hundreds of mendacious threats of imminent wide shootings, bombings and different convulsive crimes. He caused profound fearfulness and chaos and volition present look the consequences of his actions.

The lawsuit against Filion, first reported by WIRED, was built connected a trail of integer evidence near crossed platforms similar Telegram, YouTube, and Discord, and pieced unneurotic by Brad “Cafrozed” Dennis, a backstage investigator. Dennis had been hired by 2 high-profile Twitch stars, some victims of Torswats' calls, to find the idiosyncratic responsible.