A Lancaster teenager pleaded guilty Wednesday to making hundreds of "swatting" calls targeting religious institutions, schools and government officials with false threats of mass shootings, bombings and other violent crimes.
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Alan Filion, 18, entered his plea in federal court in Miami, Florida to four counts of making interstate threats to injure another person, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
"For well over 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," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. "He caused profound fear and chaos and will now face the consequences of his actions."
Filion faces up to 20 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
According to his plea agreement, Filion admitted making more than 375 threatening calls from August 2022 to last January, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs and/or would conduct mass shootings at the locations.
Filion was 16 at the time he placed the majority of the calls, prosecutors said. He intended for his calls to cause large-scale deployment of police and emergency-services units to the targeted locations, his plea agreement states.
In some instances, armed law enforcement officers approached and entered targeted residences with their weapons drawn and detained individuals who occupied the residences. In a post on Jan. 20, 2023, Filion claimed that when he swats someone, he "usually get(s) the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house, cuff them and search the house for dead bodies," according to the DOJ.
On several occasions, Filion placed posts on social-media channels advertising his swatting services for a fee, federal prosecutors said.
On Jan. 18, Filion, then 17, was arrested in California on Florida state charges arising from a May 2023 threat he made to a religious institution in Sanford, Florida. In that threat, court papers show he claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails. He said that he was going to imminently "commit a mass shooting" and "kill everyone" he saw, documents state.
Filion pleaded guilty Wednesday to making that threat.
He also pleaded guilty to making three other threatening calls, including a call to a high school in the state of Washington, in which he threatened to commit a mass shooting and claimed to have planted bombs throughout the school; a call to a historically Black college in Florida, in which he claimed to have placed bombs in the walls and ceilings of campus housing that would detonate in about an hour; 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.
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