In perhaps the largest swatting case to ever be prosecuted, an 18-year-old from Lancaster, California, has pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from a nationwide spree of hundreds of shooting and bomb threat hoaxes that sent police scrambling to high schools, courthouses, and the homes of law enforcement officials and prominent politicians.

Alan Winston Filion now faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each of four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, according to the United States Department of Justice.

Early this year, Filion was arrested and extradited to Seminole County, Florida. At the time, state prosecutors charged Filion with four state-level felony counts stemming from a single incident in which, prosecutors allege, Filion told a Sanford Police Department dispatcher that he was armed with pipe bombs and an AR-15 rifle and was walking into Masjid Al Hayy Mosque to kill everyone he saw.

Filion, whom authorities believe operated online as “Torswats,” has been in jail without a trial for nearly a year. He entered a plea of not guilty to the state charges.

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

Between approximately August 2022 to January 2024 Filion made more than 375 swatting calls, according to the plea agreement. These included incidents where he claimed to have planted bombs or threatened to conduct mass shootings at targeted locations that included religious institutions, high schools, and historically black colleges and universities.

“This prosecution and today’s guilty plea reaffirm the Justice Department’s commitment to using all tools to hold accountable every individual who endangers our communities through swatting and hoax threats,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco said in a statement. “For well over a year, Alan Filion targeted religious institutions, schools, government officials, and other innocent victims with hundreds of false threats of imminent mass shootings, bombings, and other violent crimes. He caused profound fear and chaos and will now face the consequences of his actions.”

According to court records, Filion was also part of a high-profile international swatting group that targeted several prominent figures between December 2023 and January 2024. Among the victims were US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly, Republican US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida. Investigators say they linked the scheme to roughly 100 calls, one of which targeted an unnamed former president of the United States.

Original Author: Dhruv Mehrotra | Source: Wired