Swatting Spree from California Teen: More than 375 deception calls lead to a 4 -year sentence

Los Angeles: A California teenager was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison in a case involving hundreds of calls suddenly, even a Florida mosque, among other institutions and individuals, federal prosecutors said.

Alan W. Filion, 18, declared himself guilty in November four positions of making interstate threats to hurt the person of another. Swatting is the practice of making a joke call to emergency services in an attempt to obtain a large number of armed police officers sent to a particular address.

The United States Prosecutor’s Office said that Filion made more than 375 calls from blows and threats from August 2022 to January 2024. Those calls included those who claimed to have planted bombs in specific places or threatened to detonate bombs and/or perform massive shootings in those locations. , prosecutors said.

He went to religious institutions, secondary schools, colleges and universities, government officials and people throughout the United States, prosecutors said. Filión, from Lancaster, north of Los Angeles, was 16 years old at the time he made most calls.

As part of a guilt, he admitted calls, including October one 2022, a public high school in the state of Washington, in which he threatened to commit a massive shooting and claimed to have planted bombs throughout the campus.

He also declared guilty of a May 2023 call to a historically black university in Florida, in which he claimed to have placed bombs on the walls and ceilings of the houses on the campus.

Another incident involved a July 2023 call to a local police department dispatch in Texas, in which he falsely identified as an officer of the Federal High Level Law, provided the official’s residential discourse to the dispatcher, said there was killed to the mother of the federal officer, and threatened to kill the police who responded.