A former member of a white supremacist group will serve more than three years in federal prison for his role in a nation-wide "swatting" campaign targeting Islamic groups, African-American churches and other minority groups.
"Swatting" involves making a false threat to generate a response by police and emergency officials to a location.
Prosecutors say 27-year-old John Cameron Denton of Montgomery, Texas was part of a group that organized swatting attacks on more than 134 different locations across the United States between October 2018 and February 2019. One of those was bomb threat against an Islamic center in Arlington, Texas.
"Denton's swatting activities were not harmless pranks; he carefully chose his targets to antagonize and harass religious and racial communities, journalists, and others against whom he held a bias or grievance," said Timothy Thibault, acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Criminal Division.
Denton plead guilty last year to conspiring to transmit threats. He was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.