Are we all checking in with our kids about what they’re doing online?
An 18-year-old has just pled guilty to hundreds of criminal acts, the majority carried out when he was only 16, centered on endangering the lives of innocent people by making false calls to law enforcement. Furthermore, he was getting paid for it.
Hundreds of targets — mosques, FBI offices, and more — were the subject of swatting incidents as clients hired this minor to do their dirty work for them.
What Is Swatting?
“Swatting” is a term for using police as a weapon. Some folks may claim it’s a ‘prank’ or joke but also a deadly practice.
The swatter calls a law enforcement line and makes false allegations that the target is engaging in serious criminal activity. The lie is big enough to convince the police there’s an active crime scene and a dangerous situation so they go in with the SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) team, guns blazing.
The outcome then may just be that people are terrified, and law enforcement ends up wasting taxpayer funds on a false alarm, but in other cases, it can end with victims killed or injured. It’s a serious crime and may be used to target individuals or groups based on anything from a perceived slight to an ideological or religious view.
This Teen Had Hundreds Of Swatting Targets
Alan W. Filion was 18 by the time he pled guilty to the crimes this week. However, he was a minor when he carried out most of his criminal activity. The Justice Department said in a statement:
“According to the plea agreement, from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations. He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States. Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls.”
In these calls, he gave law enforcement a variety of false information, claiming in some cases that explosive devices had been planted and in others that he or others in the location were prepared to carry out violent criminal acts.
He was 17 in January when he was arrested, initially for a single incident in 2023 in which he threatened a religious institution, claiming to have explosives, Molotov cocktails, and the intent to do violence. From there, other criminal behavior was uncovered, including a mass shooting threat to a high school and a bomb threat to an HBCU.
He publicly boasted that when he identifies a target, he gets police to “drag the victim and their families out of the house, cuff them, and search the house for dead bodies.”
The Teen Carried Out His Crimes For Both His Own Entertainment & Profit
Apparently, Filion, at age 16, was just having a blast, causing chaos and creating the risk of violence, when it occurred to him that he could also get paid for it.
He posted on social media that he had decided to turn it into a business and named his prices for various specific ‘services’ involving swatting or threatening. At this point, he’s pled guilty to four specific calls — the three previously mentioned and one in which he called a Texas police department, pretending to be a local senior officer. USA Today reported:
“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.”
However, he’s believed to have made at least 375 swatting and threat calls. He’s expected to face up to 5 years per count, so with the current guilty pleas, he could be out in less than 20 years.
Teens Can Commit Serious & Dangerous Crimes, Particularly With Internet Access
Our teens need internet access to be competent in using technology that will likely be relying on in their future jobs, as well as technology they’ll use in job applications and for school research.
However, that usage has to be monitored to some degree, which will vary for each family and child. None of us wants our kid to be the one who thinks wasting police resources and putting innocent people in danger is a mere ‘prank’ or to discover our kids are participating in other illegal and risky behaviors, such as exchanging explicit images.
Unfortunately, the same access that makes it possible to reach essentially the entire knowledge base of humanity and make friends across the globe also provides access to crime, fraudsters, con artists, and illicit substances.
Most of our kids are not at high risk for running illegal online businesses to swat strangers, but they could still be drawn into other criminal activity, extremism, and exploitation, so every parent needs to check in with their kids about their internet activity.
