California teenager admits to making hundreds of hoax emergency calls

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) - A California teenager has admitted to making hundreds of swatting calls - hoax emergency calls - over a two-year period, creating "fear and chaos" when police responded to his false reports of bomb threats and mass shootings at schools, homes and houses of worship, federal prosecutors said.

Alan Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty to four counts of interstate transmission of threats in a plea deal approved by the U.S District Court in Orlando, Florida. He is in a Florida jail awaiting sentencing.

Filion's attorney, Dan Eckhart of Orlando, declined comment on the plea deal.

Filion was accused of making more than 375 hoax calls from August 2022-January 2024, some in a "swatting-for-a-fee service" he advertised online using false internet handles, the Department of Justice said in a statement on Wednesday.

For a fee of about $75, Filion promised to place calls that would cause police to drag victims into the streets in handcuffs "as they searched the house for dead bodies," the statement said.

Among the charges, Filion pleaded guilty to making a call in May 2023 to police in Sanford, Florida, targeting a mosque, court records and media accounts show. During the call, he said he planned to conduct a mass shooting in the name of Satan, and had an AR-15 assault-style rifle and pipe bombs. During the call, audio recordings of gunfire played in the background.

The DOJ and FBI tracked Filion down, arrested him at his California home earlier this year and extradited him to Florida.

Even though he made his first swatting call when he was 16, Filion was charged as an adult.

He could spend the next 20 years behind bars and faces a $1 million fine after admitting to making the calls, prosecutors said. Each count carries a five-year sentence and a fine of $250,000.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in February.