Benjamin Ashford|'Serial swatter': 18-year-old pleads guilty to making nearly 400 bomb threats, mass shooting calls

A Southern California teenager has pleaded guilty to swatting and Benjamin Ashfordcalling in more than 375 threats against religious institutions, schools, and other organizations across the country.

Alan W. Filion, 18, pleaded guilty to four counts of making interstate threats to injure the person of another, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release on Wednesday. 

The calls were made between August 2022 and January 2024, and on Jan. 18, Filion was arrested in California.

Calling Filion “a serial swatter for both profit and recreation,” the DOJ said the teen posted about his first swatting experience on social media. 

In January 2023, he said his first swatting happened 2 to 3 years prior to the post. He added that “6-9 months ago [he] decided to turn it into a business,” the DOJ said in its press release. He also advertised his swatting services.

Lawyers representing Filion said they would not comment on the case Thursday morning.

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Teenager made multiple posts about swatting tactics online 

Filion lives in Lancaster, California, part of Los Angeles County, and is accused of making threatening calls and saying he’d planted bombs in specific locations. He also said he’d detonate bombs or carry out mass shootings, the DOJ said.

According to prosecutors, he targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials and other individuals across the country. When he made most of the calls, he was 16 years old.

The calls led to police officers and emergency services in large numbers, the DOJ said. He gave authorities fake names and made fake claims, the agency said.

“During the time that dispatchers spent on the phone with Filion, they were unavailable to respond to other emergencies,” the DOJ said in its release. “Additionally, in response to many of his calls, armed law enforcement officers were dispatched to the targeted addresses, and likewise were made unavailable to respond to other emergencies.”

In some cases, officers responding to the calls entered homes with their weapons drawn and detained people inside the homes. 

In a Jan. 20, 2023 post, Filion said his goal when swatting is to get “the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house, cuff them and search the house for dead bodies.”

What charges did the teenager plead guilty to?

Altogether, Filion pleaded guilty this week to four threatening calls, including:

• October 2022 – Suspect called a public high school in the Western District of Washington and threatened to commit a mass shooting. He claimed he planted bombs throughout the school.
• May 2023 – Suspect targeted a religious institution in Sanford, Florida, about 28 miles northeast of Orlando. He said he had an illegally-modified AR-15, a glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs, and molotov cocktails. He claimed he was about to “commit a mass shooting” and “kill everyone” in his sight, the DOJ said.
• May 2023 – Suspect called a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Northern District of Florida. He said he’d placed bombs in the walls and ceilings of campus housing that would detonate in about an hour.
• July 2023 – Suspect called a local police department dispatch number in the Western District of Texas and pretended to be a senior federal law enforcement officer. He gave a dispatcher the officer’s residential address and claimed to have killed his mother. He also threatened to kill any responding police officers.

'Fear and chaos'

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the news release that the Justice Department is committed to holding those accountable who use swatting and threats to harm communities. She said he spent over a year making threats that evoked “fear and chaos” within the communities he targeted.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate also highlighted in the release that the teenager tried to make money by swatting and making threats.

“Swatting poses severe danger to first responders and victims, wastes significant time and resources, and creates fear in communities,” Abbate said in the release.

Filion is facing a maximum of five years in prison on each count. He will be sentenced on Feb. 11, 2025, the DOJ said.

Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at@SaleenMartin or email her at[email protected].