• An 18-year old from California who sold swatting services online has been sentenced to 48 months in a federal prison.
• The teenager made 375 swat calls between 2022 and 2024 charging as much as $75 for a bomb threat.
• Among his targets were places of worship, schools, universities and even law enforcement officers.

Swatting is the act of calling the police and reporting that a crime is happening at an address in hopes of drawing out a monumental police response. These pranks calls can be incredibly dangerous so much so that streamers often inform police of their address warning them that these dangerous prank calls could happen at some point.

One perpetrator of these pranks is 18-year old Alan Filion from California – who made 375 swatting calls for money – between August 2022 and January 2024. In these calls he claimed to have planted bombs, threatened to detonate bombs, conduct mass shootings at schools, places of worship and worse.

“During these calls, he provided information to law enforcement and emergency services agencies that he knew to be false, such as false names, false claims that he and others had placed explosives in particular locations, false claims that he and others possessed dangerous weapons, including firearms and explosives, and false claims that he and other individuals had committed, or intended to imminently commit, violent crimes,” the US Department of Justice wrote.

The Department of Justice goes on to say that in some instances, law enforcement entered the houses Filion reported with weapons drawn, detaining individuals.

What makes this all the more sickening is that Filion bragged about his exploits online, going so far as to advertise his services. Seemingly in a bid to evade suspicion, Filion also swatted himself and his home.

Ars Technica reports that in an advert he ran on social media in 2023 he charged $40 to report a gas leak or call fire and emergency services. “$50 for a major police response to the house [$40 for returning customers]; $75 for a bomb threat/mass shooting threat (they will shut down the school or public location for a day) [$60 for returning customers]. All swats will be done ASAP or present time,” the post advertised.

In January of last year Filion was finally arrested. The incident that lead to that arrest saw Filion claiming to be targeting a Mosque in Florida in a mass shooting. A police report from the incident shared by Ars Technica reveals that “a female and her two children were standing at the Mosque entrance” when police arrived. Thankfully nothing happened here aside from local police being bogged down by a prank call that eventually brought in the Counter Terrorism Unit.

The teenager plead guilty to making the threat as well as three others in federal court. In the other incidents Filion threatened a high school in Washington, a historically Black college in Florida and falsely identified himself as a senior federal law enforcement officer in Texas. In that final incident, Filion pretended to be the aforementioned officer and “confessed” to having killed his mother and threatening any responding officers.

For this crimes, Filion will spend 48 months or four years in a federal prison. That seems like a light sentence but it doesn’t appear as if anybody was injured or killed as a result of Filion’s actions.

There have sadly been deaths caused by swatting pranks. In 2019 a teen from Ohio was sentenced to 15 months in prison for swatting somebody in Kansas who police shot and killed.