On Wednesday, a Canadian 17-year-old pleaded guilty to 23 charges relating to swatting calls and other false police reports, many of which had targeted his online opponents in the video game League of Legends.
According to a lengthy report by Canadian publication Tri-City News, the prosecution's case against the Coquitlam, British Columbia teenager asserted that the teen (whose name wasn't released due to his age) targeted "mostly young, female gamers" who declined or ignored his friend requests on LoL and Twitter.
The most notable example was an University of Arizona in Tucson college student who'd dropped out after she and her family members had been victimized by repeated swatting calls (including this nearly simultaneous attack on both the woman and her parents), financial information theft, "text bombs," false cell phone service orders, and intrusions into her e-mail and Twitter accounts. According to prosecutors, the months of attacks against this woman began on September 16 when the teen called Tucson police as if he were at her address, "claiming he had shot his parents with an AR15 rifle, had bombs, and would kill the police if he saw any marked vehicles," the report stated.
The report also mentioned an incident on December 1 in which the teenager posted an eight-hour video stream of himself making fake bomb and ransom threats to various police stations. Ars was able to locate an archive of this video which included the same Grove City, Ohio police call described in the Tri-City News report (the specific, offending snippet can be found here). In that call, which he made using Google Voice, he described a hostage situation in which he had bound and gagged a family, was (again) wielding an AR15, had planted "six bombs" around their home, and demanded a $20,000 ransom.
New meaning of the word “obnoxious”
The user, who identified himself in the video as a member of Lizard Squad and went by the handles "obnoxious" and "internetjesusob," was arrested eight days later in his hometown of Coquitlam. That arrest, according to a Polk County Sheriff's Office press release, came after local authorities were tipped off about two fake bomb threats he'd called into an Orlando-area high school in September and October—which he'd called in after telling his "juvenile" victim, "I am going to swat your school."
The case against this swatting teen was stacked with even more stories of false reports, including him admitting to having called in a 2013 bomb threat to Disneyland that targeted its Space Mountain ride. The attacks described in the Tri-City News report targeted victims who resided almost exclusively in the United States, including other swatting and financial fraud incidents in Minnesota, California, and Utah.
The report described the teen's apparently remorseless appearance at the Wednesday hearing: "Wearing a sweatsuit, no shoes and shackles on his ankles, the teen smirked but showed little emotion during the proceeding, though often flipped his hair, drummed his fingers on his knees or pumped his leg quickly." He will return to the same Coquitlam court on June 29 for sentencing.
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