By Rich McKay
(Reuters) – A California teenager has admitted to making hundreds of swatting calls – hoax emergency calls – over a two-year period, causing “fear and chaos” as police responded to his false reports of bomb threats and mass school shootings and homes and places of worship, federal prosecutors said.
Alan Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty to four counts of interstate transmission of threats in a plea deal approved by the U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida. He is in a Florida prison awaiting sentencing.
Filion’s attorney, Dan Eckhart of Orlando, declined comment on the plea deal.
Filion was accused of making more than 375 hoax calls between August 2022 and January 2024, some through a “swatting-for-a-fee service” that he advertised online using fake Internet credentials, the Justice Department said Wednesday in a statement.
For a fee of about $75, Filion promised to make calls that would have police drag the victims out into the street in handcuffs “while they searched the house for dead bodies,” the statement said.
Among the charges, Filion pleaded guilty to calling police in Sanford, Florida, in May 2023, targeting a mosque, according to court records and media accounts. During the conversation, he said he was planning to carry out a mass shooting in the name of Satan, and that he had an AR-15 assault rifle and pipe bombs. During the conversation, audio recordings of gunshots played in the background.
The DOJ and FBI tracked down Filion, arrested him at his California home earlier this year and extradited him to Florida.
Although he made his first swat at the age of 16, Filion was charged as an adult.
He could spend the next 20 years behind bars and faces a $1 million fine after admitting to making the calls, prosecutors said. Each charge carries a penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
He is expected to be sentenced in February.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frances Kerry)
