A Lancaster, California, teen accused of making hundreds of swatting calls and offering swatting-for-a-fee services was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison.
Alan W. Filion, 18, pleaded guilty in November in Florida to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, NBC Los Angeles.
From August 2022 to January 2024, Filion placed more than 375 swatting and threat calls, according to prosecutors. Some of the calls included bomb and shooting threats to religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and individuals across the United States.
Filion, 16 at the time most of the calls were placed, sought to trigger a large-scale law enforcement and emergency response to the locations, prosecutors said. In some swatting cases, officers entered locations with weapons drawn and detained people, the Department of Justice said.
Filion pleaded guilty in November to making four calls, the Desert Sun reports:
• October 2022 – Suspect called a public high school in the Western District of Washington and threatened to commit a mass shooting. He claimed he planted bombs throughout the school.
• May 2023 – Suspect targeted a religious institution in Sanford, Florida, about 28 miles northeast of Orlando. He said he had an illegally-modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and molotov cocktails. He claimed he was about to “commit a mass shooting” and “kill everyone” in his sight, the DOJ said.
• May 2023 – Suspect called a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Northern District of Florida. He said he’d placed bombs in the walls and ceilings of campus housing that would detonate in about an hour.
• July 2023 – Suspect called a local police department dispatch number in the Western District of Texas and pretended to be a senior federal law enforcement officer. He gave a dispatcher the officer’s residential address and claimed to have killed his mother. He also threatened to kill any responding police officers.
