File photo of LAPD patrol SUV.
A Lancaster 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.
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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.
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SIGN UP Swatting involves prank calls to law enforcement in an attempt to draw a large SWAT response to an address.
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 also posted ads on social media for fee-based swatting services, prosecutors said.
He was arrested Jan. 18 in California on Florida state charges stemming from a May 2023 threat he made to a religious institution, authorities said. Filion claimed claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails, according to the DOJ.
He said that he was going to imminently "commit a mass shooting" and "kill everyone" he saw, court documents state.
Filion pleaded guilty in November to making that threat and three other threatening calls, including those targeting a Washington high school; a historically Black college in Florida; and a call to a local police department dispatch number in Texas, in which he falsely identified himself as a senior federal law enforcement officer, provided the officer's residential address to the dispatcher, claimed to have killed his mother, and threatened to kill any responding police officers, according to the DOJ.
