Teen Pleads Guilty To Making 375 'Swatting' Calls Across US (cnn.com) 61
quonset shares a report from CNN: Between August 2022 and January 2024, hundreds of swatting calls were made across the country targeting religious institutions, government offices, schools, and random people. Authorities were finally able to track down the criminal, Alan Fillon, who entered the plea to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida said in a news release. He faces up to five years in prison on each count. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
The US Attorney's Office said Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls from August 2022 to January 2024. Those calls included ones in which he claimed to have planted bombs in targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations, prosecutors said. He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials and people across the United States. Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls.
The US Attorney's Office said Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls from August 2022 to January 2024. Those calls included ones in which he claimed to have planted bombs in targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations, prosecutors said. He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials and people across the United States. Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls.
WTF?! (Score:1)
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How does a govt agency allow itself to be directed by a teenage prankster?
We spend billions on SWAT and other forms of militarized police.
Much of that money comes from Federal grants.
There isn't much for them to do, but to justify their existence and keep the money flowing, they need to keep up their "incident" count.
So when they receive an anonymous bomb threat, they have no incentive to do any sanity checking or de-escalation. They grab their guns, board the armored infantry vehicle, and go.
Re:WTF?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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But maybe thats too much to ask from authoritarians.
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WTF would have them do, ignore bomb and mass shooting threats?
Well, for starters, sending in a drone or robot instead of heavily armed humans would go a long way to avoid mishaps. It also would be a whole lot less hilarious for the pranksters if SWATting just amounted to the victim telling a robot "nope, no hostage situation here, someone's yanking your chain."
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Sounds like a good way to give someone advanced notice of police arriving.
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I'm 53, a Brit and the son of two soldiers.
I went to several BFES (British Forces Education Services) schools in West Germany, back in the day. You may recall that things were quite fraught back then - different to today but also the same. We used to get bomb threats roughly weekly - just at school, it was worse for the troops. Some of those were traced to older kids having a laugh. (lol)
In about 10 years (roughly late '70s to mid '80s) quite a lot happened. I was 10 in 1980.
Anyway, govt agencies have t
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If someone is trying to kick your door in while screaming death threats, you you want the 911 operator to question whether or not it's a real call?
The only way to determine if it's a real call is to have someone on site. That can be handled poorly (and sometimes is), but the only way the system works is to respond to all calls. There's plenty of historical examples of why that is.
(This little shit should get 375 consecutive sentences, and spend the rest of his useless, parasitic life in a 6x9 foot concrete
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When you have a bunch of hammers [visualcapitalist.com], everything looks like nails.
Good (Score:2)
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Given my experiences during the past 10-12 months, I'd prefer they focus on shutting down unsolicited political marketers... from either side of the aisle.
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Given my experiences during the past 10-12 months, I'd prefer they focus on shutting down unsolicited political marketers... from either side of the aisle.
Some of the more annoying calls (from both sides) were obvious scams that I'm sure people fell for. "For the next 12 hours only, an anonymous doner will match your contribution 10x!!!" Uh, yeah. It's like sitting in Jita on Eve Online when someone offers to double your ISK. I'm glad the election is over. I think everybody was getting fatigue. *Cue some random statement about "Chito Benito" or Kamala Harris and her alleged ammonia problem.* Ugh.
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I'm glad the election is over.
This has always been my feeling when we get to this time of year, every four years. I realize the governmental structures are somewhat different, but - I envy those countries where they call an election, the candidates politic for a month or so, and then everyone votes and it's over. Our seemingly multiyear presidential campaigns are just ridiculous.
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Has the 2026 midterms campaign kicked off yet?
We need to make examples out of these... (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to make examples out of people like this. If Wells Fargo can stop Tik-Tok people from exploiting check fraud, then the Federal government can do something about terroristic threats and swatting. Otherwise, this will just continue. Loving in a urban area, it is not uncommon for, when an event has tickets sold out, for people to call in a threat just to cause the event to have to be cancelled. Come finals every semester? Yep all classes are stopped and the dogs are brought in.
Re:We need to make examples out of these... (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to make examples out of people like this.
Idiot teenagers don't research sentencing history before doing stupid stuff, so harsh punishment has little deterrent effect.
It is better to put resources into better policing to increase the chance of getting caught, and better systems that allow faster tracking of calls to emergency numbers.
Or, hear me out (Score:5, Insightful)
Demilitarized the police.
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Seeing as how he was 16 year old, and without any significant cognitive impairments, he should have known that each of those calls could have resulted in a death. Therefore the charge should not be less than attempted murder, as that's what he was trying to do. Was he trying to kill someone? The answer is yes. It's not reasonable to assume that swatting someone would just be a big scare .. especially not the way he did it. So attempted murder should be the charge and his sentence must either block him from
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Seeing as how he was 16 year old, and without any significant cognitive impairments, he should have known that each of those calls could have resulted in a death. Therefore the charge should not be less than attempted murder, as that's what he was trying to do.
What the article describes is not attempted murder. Attempted murder is when you report someone with a bloody axe inside the house of an elderly couple - everyone in that house is at a lethal risk. An unknown person dropping a bomb in a school - that is an unknown perpetrator and a few hundred innocent kids - would require different tactics.
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Or we could stop firing police officers for not shooting people. [cnn.com]
Then maybe swatting would be a little less satisfying.
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We need to make examples out of people like this.
Idiot teenagers don't research sentencing history before doing stupid stuff, so harsh punishment has little deterrent effect.
It is better to put resources into better policing to increase the chance of getting caught, and better systems that allow faster tracking of calls to emergency numbers.
Really? A “better system” you think will do it? After 100 bullshit calls, one would think SWAT would have a clue something is up. After three hundred seventy fucking five calls, a few people should be getting fired and a few systems should be getting shitcanned.
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After three hundred seventy fucking five calls, a few people should be getting fired and a few systems should be getting shitcanned.
He made those calls across the country over a period of a year and a half. How would you like to single out those three hundred plus calls from the billions of other calls made during that time considering none of the officials involved knew about the other calls? On top of which, there were undoubtedly other swatting calls made during that time.
Re:We need to make examples out of these. (Score:2)
After three hundred seventy fucking five calls, a few people should be getting fired and a few systems should be getting shitcanned.
He made those calls across the country over a period of a year and a half. How would you like to single out those three hundred plus calls from the billions of other calls made during that time considering..
..considering what? Your inability to be realistic about the math, or your ability to bullshit about it? Billions of SWAT calls? Really? Try that argument again. When you grow the fuck up and want to talk to the adults with facts.
Sure thing champ (Score:2)
https://www.theiacp.org/resour... [theiacp.org].
There are 17,000 police departments across the US. 5,000 SWAT teams. 375 calls across 15 months. Just because a police department doesn't have a SWAT team doesn't mean they don't break down your door and pay you a visit, so we'll use the 17,000 number. Distributed randomly, the odds of him calling the same police department twice are 1 in 45. Even if he called the same police department more than once, it could have been distributed to one of multiple 911 call centers, or p
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Billions of SWAT calls?
I didn't say billions of swatting calls. I said billions of calls.
Perhaps you're the one who should grow up so you have reading comprehension because clearly you're not an adult.
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Idiot teenagers don't research sentencing history before doing stupid stuff, so harsh punishment has little deterrent effect
You don't need to "research sentencing history". Somebody has an idea, talks about it, and someone more grown up will tell him "that's how you go into jail until you are released in 30 years time aged 45. No sex with a female ever for you'. I had some good idea at 15 what was stupid and what was so far beyond stupid that it wasn't fun anymore (except for the police officers arresting you. They usually have some idea what is what and have a lot of fun kicking in your door and suddenly you have a door and fiv
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juvie till 21 and then what?
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Have you forgotten that public schools are a thing? Teach the kids that they'll catch serious hell for SWATting and yes, then it will be a deterrent. I'm totally for it being a crime tried as an adult, where you can be locked away for a very long time.
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Teach the kids that they'll catch serious hell for SWATting and yes, then it will be a deterrent.
Yes, but "serious hell" doesn't have to be 20 years in adult prison for a 16-year-old kid.
Put an ankle tracker on the kid and have him spend five years (or ten) cleaning bedpans in nursing homes.
That's plenty of deterrent, and the work is a net benefit to society. That's way more sensible than prison.
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What you describe often leads to copycat crimes, which is the opposite of what is intended.
You are presuming that someone who would prank 911 is rational. They are often antisocial and looking for a way to lash out at society or at least get people to notice them.
What you imagine: "That kid did something dumb and was punished. I shouldn't do that."
Reality: "Wow. That kid's is in all the newspapers. Everyone knows his name. I should do the same so people notice me."
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We need to make examples out of people like this. If Wells Fargo can stop Tik-Tok people from exploiting check fraud...
Is this some kind of weird joke? Since when has Wells Fargo ever stopped any kind of fraud, including their own?
Can someone please explain (Score:3)
The US allows an unbelievable amount of freedom for individuals to have absolutely insane, hateful views and hobbies. As a society, we largely learned our lessons from the 1900s when the FBI was constantly messing with people like MLK and feeding LSD to closet gays, and now we have a solid century of bad rep to live down. As long as you aren’t imminently about to hurt anyone, our spies just stand way back and monitor. And those agencies are really, really good at monitoring.
So, when the FBI says they didnt know who this kid was while he swatted nearly 400 places, I straight-up don’t believe them. My question is - why did they wait for so long? There absolutely must be a rational reason. Those are very, VERY smart people.
Re:Can someone please explain (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont believe for a second that a 16 year old is capable of doing anything more sophisticated than dialing their smartphone.
Not that I think it's necessary because neither LE or telcos are spectacularly competent, nor do I know whether he did anything whatsoever, but I don't think that some basic VoIP tomfoolery is beyond the reach of a 16 year old with enough language skills to read a HOWTO. When some of us were kids that would have been arcane knowledge, now you can probably just ask Google.
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We didn't defund the police [go.com] so you don't understand anything, in or out of context.
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there exist online VOIP phone systems.. you can make a call... use a few proxies... sit outside a coffee shops wifi spot.. good luck to the local police force in trying to trace that call, and get accurate logs/IP's/names from any of the services used.
It's actually a surprise that this kid was eventually nailed... and i do hope they nail his a** to the wall and make a spectacle out of it so that anyone thinking of doing it again will know better.
A year in jail per instance is a light sentence. If he spends
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My take is nobody in "law enforcement" actually cared. I mean, they get to brutalize people and demo their shiny tech and look all mean and mighty and they get paid anyways. Why would they take offense?
The US allows an unbelievable amount of freedom for individuals to have absolutely insane, hateful views and hobbies.
You have an exceptionally dangerous stance there. Because think for a moment what it would take to suppress these.
Public hanging during halftime (Score:2)
And be very public about why.
Same for fentanyl mules and dealers.
Same for corrupt government officials
Same for people who abuse women, children or the elderly
Same for people who swindle the elderly
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Yeah, everyone wants to live in Iran.
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Does not help. Cave-men like you do not get that the death "penalty" has zero preventative value. That is because you are not very smart, deep in denial about reality and want to be _violent_. Great accomplishments...
Re: Public hanging during halftime (Score:1)
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By having _other_ predatory individuals kill them? Great approach! Also completely immoral. Nice personal accomplishment there too.
Re: Public hanging during halftime (Score:2)
Comrade Xi, we stopped doing that years ago.
punishment (Score:2)
voice fingerprints have been around for awhile (Score:2)