Police Arrest Teen Said to Be Linked to Hundreds of Swatting Attacks
A California teenager who allegedly used the handle Torswats to carry out a nationwide swatting campaign is being extradited to Florida to face felony charges, WIRED has learned.
www.wired.com
A 17-year-old from California is allegedly the swatter known as Torswats, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The teenager is currently in custody and awaiting extradition from California to Seminole County, Florida. The Florida State Attorney’s Office tells WIRED that he faces four felony counts.
Seminole County, located in central Florida, had two high-profile swatting incidents within the last 12 months, including one targeting a mosque and another targeting a courthouse. Todd Brown, a spokesperson for Florida’s Office of the State Attorney in the 18th Circuit, confirmed the charges against the teen and his extradition. Brown says he will be prosecuted as an adult under Florida law. WIRED is withholding the 17-year-old’s name because he is a minor.
A 17-year-old teen from California. He will be extradited to Florida to stand trial as an adult.
There's been quite a rash of swatting incidents.
Since Christmas, swatters have targeted the homes of prominent politicians from both parties, judges handling cases involving former US president Donald Trump, and the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Prior to these high-profile swats, a relentless campaign from different, potentially foreign, swatting groups targeted hundreds of schools and universities around the US over the past year and a half. Last May, an officer in Danvers, Massachusetts, accidentally fired his service weapon while responding to a school swat. In February, an officer in Saginaw Township, Michigan, rammed his vehicle through the school’s locked door to get inside the building following a swatting call.
The article gives some detail as to how swatting works.
In private Telegram chats seen by WIRED, an individual behind the Torswats account described their method for carrying out school swattings. After proxying their network traffic through a commercial VPN, the individual would look up the school in every county they targeted using the Public School Review website to find each address. They then would Google the phone number for the nearest police department and use Google Voice to place calls. While most of this appeared to be done on an Android device, they would occasionally use a digital sound board on their PC to introduce gunshot sounds that appeared to be recorded from the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
“State and local law enforcement often feel like a swatter is doing something sophisticated, and that’s just often not the case,” Keven Hendricks, a cybercrime expert and swatting investigator, tells WIRED. In November, Torswats claimed to have swatted Hendricks and his family. Hendricks declined to comment about the swatting.
During a hoax call allegedly placed by Torswats and obtained by WIRED that targeted La Plata High School in Charles County, Maryland, last year, the school resource officer informed the caller that he was under an active investigation. “I am never going to be caught,” the caller laughed. “I am invincible.”
“I am never going to be caught,” the caller laughed. “I am invincible.”
It did take a two-year investigation to finally catch this guy, but it does appear there are quite a few holes in the system.