In perhaps the largest swatting case ever prosecuted, an 18-year-old from Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from a nationwide wave of hundreds of shooting hoaxes and bomb threats that sent police to go to secondary schools and courts. and the homes of law enforcement officials.
Alan Winston Filion now faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each of four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, according to the United States Department of Justice.
Earlier this year, Filion was arrested and extradited to Seminole County, Florida. At the time, state prosecutors charged Filion with four state felonies stemming from a single incident in which prosecutors allege Filion told a Sanford Police Department dispatcher that he was armed with pipe bombs and an AR-15 rifle and that he walked towards the Masjid Al Hajj Mosque to kill everyone he saw.
Filion, who authorities believe operated online as “Torswats,” has been in prison without trial for nearly a year. He pleaded not guilty.
The federal charges announced Wednesday, along with interviews of people connected to the investigation (and Filion himself), allege that his swatting activities reached far beyond Florida’s borders.
According to the plea agreement, between approximately August 2022 and January 2024, Filion made more than 375 crush calls. These included incidents in which he claimed to have planted bombs or threatened to carry out mass shootings at specific locations including religious institutions, high schools, and historically black colleges and universities.
“This indictment and today’s guilty plea reaffirm the Department of Justice’s commitment to using every tool to hold accountable every individual who endangers our communities through intimidation and false threats,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. release. “For more than a year, Alan Filion targeted religious institutions, schools, government officials, and other innocent victims with hundreds of false threats of imminent mass shootings, bombings, and other violent crimes. He caused deep fear and chaos and now he will face the consequences of his actions.
The case against Filion, first reported by WIRED, was built on a trail of digital evidence left on platforms such as Telegram, YouTube and Discord, and was put together by Brad “Cafrozed” Dennis, a private investigator. Dennis had been hired by two high-profile Twitch stars, both victims of Torswats’ calls, to find the person responsible.