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swatted down Serial swatter behind 375 violent hoaxes targeted his own home to look like a victim He now faces four years in federal prison. Nate Anderson Feb 12, 2025 2:21 pm | 109 Alan Filions mug shot. Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA teacher in high school once quoted an old proverb to me: "Do something you love, and you'll never work a day in your life!"Perhaps 18-year-old Alan Filion encountered a similar teacher during his school years in California, because once Filion learned that he truly loved making fake "swatting" calls to law enforcementwell, he turned the crime into a job, using handles like "Nazgul Swattings" and "Third Reich of Kiwiswats." Originally it was all about the "power trip," but it soon became about "money and the power trip.""Prices: $40-Gas leak/Fire for EMS/Fire/Gas Leak [$35 for returning customers]," Filion wrote in a 2023 advertisement that ran on various social media channels. "$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."He worked hard at the job. Between August 2022 and January 2024, for instance, when Filion offered his swatting service to others for money, he made 375 calls. That's an average of 21 a month, which means that every day and a half, Filion was firing up his many VoIP services, turning on his VPNs, and activating his text-to-speech apps in order to cause mayhem across the US, UK, and Canada.To make sure everything worked smoothlyand by smoothly, I mean "cause maximum chaos"Filion even tested his methods against his own home address in late 2022. He made numerous "self-swatting" calls, which he later wrote about. "I swatted myself like 3 times to test my methods," he said. "It was hard keeping a straight face... When I swatted myself the cops' extreme reaction was due to my special scenario."Filion would purposely create extreme scenarios to ensure that police reactions were themselves extreme. The goal, he wrote in 2023, was to "get the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house, cuff them, and search the house for dead bodies."Repeat offenderFilion was willing to harass just about anyoneand more than once. He targeted public schools in Skagit County, Washington, on October 10, 2022, for instance, leaving a voicemail that said, "I am going to commit a school shooting with my AR-15 and Glock. I will kill as many kids as I can and then I will shoot myself. I have pipe bombs that I have placed in the bathrooms..." He also identified an actual 17-year-old student at the school as the perpetrator of this threat. A bomb squad responded to the school.On October 12, he called back, again threatening pipe bomb explosions in various cars in the school parking lot. Cops were deployed to search the vehicles and the entire school building.On October 13, he posted on social media that he had "called in a fake shooting threat" just so that "I could get you pigs to search the school and declare an 'all clear' so you would not be prepared for when the real school shooting comes. Now, it is too late for you to stop me."On October 14, he called a crisis hotline and told them that he had stolen his father's Glock, was in the bathroom of the high school, and was going to take revenge on those who had mocked him. Law enforcement cleared the whole school this time.On November 9, he called a local suicide prevention hotline in Skagit County and said he was going to "shoot up the school" and had an AR-15 for the purpose.In April, he called the local police departmenttwicethreatening school violence and demanding $1,000 in monero (a cryptocurrency) to make the threats stop.In May, he called in threats to 20 more public high schools across the state of Washington, and he ended many of the calls with "the sound of automatic gunfire." Many of the schools conducted lockdowns in response.To get a sense of how disruptive this was, extrapolate this kind of behavior across the nation. Filion made similar calls to Iowa high schools, businesses in Florida, religious institutions, historical black colleges and universities, private citizens, members of Congress, cabinet-level members of the executive branch, heads of multiple federal law enforcement agencies, at least one US senator, and "a former President of the United States." An incident report from Florida after Filion made a swatting call against a mosque there. Who, me?On July 15, 2023, the FBI actually searched Filion's home in Lancaster, California, and interviewed both Filion and his father. Filion professed total bafflement about why they might be there. High schools in Washington state? Filion replied that he "did not understand what the agents were talking about."His father, who appears to have been unaware of his son's activity, chimed in to point out that the family had actually been a recent victim of swatting! (The self-swattings did dual duty here, also serving to make Filion look like a victim, not the ringleader.)When the FBI agents told the Filions that it was actually Alan who had made those calls on his own address, Alan "falsely denied any involvement."Amazingly, when the feds left with the evidence from their search, Alan returned to swatting. It was not until January 18, 2024, that he was finally arrested.He eventually pled guilty and signed a lengthy statement outlining the crimes recounted above. Yesterday, he was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison.Nate AndersonDeputy EditorNate AndersonDeputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 109 Comments
