WASHINGTON (AP) — Two men from Europe face charges in a conspiracy to make false reports of police emergencies to harass and threaten members of Congress, top U.S. government officials and dozens of other people, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.
Thomasz Szabo, 26, of Romania, and Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia, attacked at least 100 people with “swatting” calls to provoke an aggressive response from police officers at the victims’ homes, the federal indictment says.
The calls also included threats to carry out mass shootings at New York City synagogues and to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and a university, the indictment said. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., returned the charges last Thursday.
Online court records in Washington did not say whether Szabo or Radovanovic were arrested or represented by attorneys. A court document accompanying their indictment said investigators last week believed they were in several foreign countries. A spokesman for Graves’ office declined to provide details.
Szabo and Radovanovic are both accused of conspiracy and more than two dozen counts of making threats. The plot spanned more than three years, from December 2020 to January 2024, prosecutors said.
“Swatting is not a victimless joke — it endangers real people, wastes valuable police resources, and causes significant emotional trauma,” Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.
Szabo organized and moderated chat groups to coordinate swatting attacks against 40 civilians and 61 government officials, including cabinet members of the federal executive branch, the head of a federal law enforcement agency, a federal judge, current and former governors and other state officials, the indictment said.
In December 2023 and January 2024, Radovanovic allegedly called government agencies to falsely report murders and threatened suicides or kidnappings at the homes of U.S. senators, members of the House of Representatives and elected state officials, the indictment alleges. One of the calls led to a car crash that left people injured, the indictment alleges.
