A California teenager has been sentenced to four years in prison for his involvement in hundreds of swatting calls. The calls targeted various institutions and individuals, including a Florida mosque. This sentence was handed down by federal prosecutors.
In November, Alan W. Filion, an 18-year-old, admitted his guilt for making interstate threats to harm others. The act he engaged in is commonly known as swatting, which involves making prank calls to emergency services with the intention of triggering a response from a significant number of armed police officers sent to a specific location.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Filion has been involved in over 375 instances of swatting and making threats between August 2022 and January 2024. These calls included alarming claims of planted bombs and threats of detonation, as well as mass shootings at specific locations. Prosecutors have highlighted the seriousness of these actions.
Prosecutors have stated that Filion, a resident of Lancaster, north of Los Angeles, targeted various institutions and individuals across the United States. These included religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and ordinary people. It is worth noting that Filion was just 16 years old when he made the majority of these calls.
As part of a plea agreement, he admitted to making calls, including one in October 2022 to a public high school in Washington state, in which he threatened to commit a mass shooting and claimed to have hidden bombs on campus.
In May 2023, he admitted his guilt in making a phone call to a historically black college and university in Florida. During the call, he falsely claimed that he had hidden bombs inside the walls and ceilings of campus housing.
In another incident, which took place in July 2023, a call was made to a dispatch center of a local police department in Texas. During the call, the individual falsely portrayed themselves as a senior federal law enforcement officer. They went on to provide the residential address of the officer and made a false claim of having murdered the officer’s mother. Furthermore, they issued a threat to kill any police officers who would respond to the situation.