A California teenager who to institutions around the country will serve four years in federal prison, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Alan Filion, 18, faced a maximum of five years per charge on four counts of making interstate threats but was ultimately sentenced to 48 months, according to the Department of Justice.
The California teenager was . In 375 calls over two years, Filion targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials — including FBI agents and numerous other individuals.
Swatting is the practice of making fraudulent calls with the intention of drawing a large public safety response where no emergency exists. The FBI formed to facilitate information sharing from multiple agencies throughout the U.S., NBC News reported in 2023.
Federal prosecutors said Filion was making the fake threats for both recreation and to make money. In online posts he made in January 2023, the teen admitted to making the calls for about two to three years before eventually deciding to make it a business, officials said.
Most of the calls were made when Filion was 16, prosecutors have said.
Filion wrote in one post on Jan. 20, 2023, that when he swats someone he usually gets “the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies.”
About a year later, Filion was arrested on Florida state charges over a 2023 call where he claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. He targeted a mosque in that case, threatening to commit a mass shooting on the premises.
According to court records, while on the phone with the police, Filion played audio of gunfire in the background, which prompted more than 30 law enforcement officers to respond to the mosque.
But once inside, officers realized there was no gunman and that everyone was safe.
He plead guilty in federal court in that incident, the Department of Justice said.
Filion also pleaded guilty to three other incidents: a October 2022 call threatening a high school in Washington, a fake May 2023 bomb threat at a historically black College or University in Florida, and a July 2023 call where he falsely identified as a federal law enforcement officer who killed his mother.
He also gave a dispatcher the address to an officer’s residence and threatened to shoot anyone who responded, the Department of Justice said.
