The caller had a speech impediment, but his message to police was clear: He had just shot someone and was ready to fire again.

The man told the 911 operator he had shot his girlfriend, tied up his father, and planned to shoot himself inside his Framingham home.

Police rushed to the house and surrounded it, guns drawn, lights flaring. They yelled for the caller to come out.

The person who walked out wasn’t the caller. It was 70-year-old Irandi Waithe.

Inside, no one was dead. No one was tied up. The only other person home was her 95-year-old mother-in-law, a double amputee, who had been asleep.


“I wondered what was happening, but I wasn’t scared, because I knew I did nothing wrong,’’ Irandi said. “The police came out, and they said, ‘There’s nothing here.’ I said, ‘I know!’’’

The Waithes were victims of swatting, which the FBI defines as a situation when a person calls 911 and fakes an emergency that causes law enforcement—usually a SWAT team—to race to an unsuspecting victim’s home.

Because of the Bay state’s weak public records laws and police secrecy, there’s no way of knowing how many swatting incidents have occurred in Massachusetts or how much they’ve cost taxpayers. Boston.com found at least 11 incidents of swatting in Massachusetts in the past year alone, with at least four cases in April.

Swatting is illegal in states including California, where attacks against celebrities like Justin Bieber, the Kardashians, and Rihanna have raised the issue’s profile. But there’s no specific law against swatting in Massachusetts.

Police say it’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed.

When Did This Start?

Swatters are notoriously difficult to track, because they disguise their voices and change their caller IDs through the use of legal software. They can make a call appear to come from the house they’re targeting, even if they’re thousands of miles away.


One of the first convicted swatters was a teenager who operated from his home in Revere. The swatter, Matthew Weigman, is legally blind. At age 5, he called 911 just to see what the operator would do, and by age 10, was spending much of his time on telephone party lines, according to a 2009 Rolling Stone profile. As he got older, he and a group of friends began “phreaking’’ on their telephone party lines.

The original “phone phreaks’’ studied and hacked telephone networks to make phone calls without paying.

Weigman and his friends took phreaking even further when they used their knowledge of the phone network to convince phone company workers to divulge confidential customer information, according to an FBI report.

The FBI reported that, between 2002 and 2006, Weigman and four others rang up $250,000 in losses, victimizing more than 100 people in more than 60 cities.

Weigman first swatted in 2004 when he was 14. A girl he met in an online chatroom refused to have phone sex with him, the FBI said, so Weigman called 911 and told the operator he was holding the girl and her father at gunpoint. A SWAT team went to her house, but police weren’t able to trace the call back to Weigman for a year.

He kept hacking and swatting until 2008, when he was finally arrested. Weigman pleaded guilty to computer intrusion and witness intimidation in 2009 and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

But he wasn’t convicted of swatting because swatting isn’t a crime in Massachusetts.

Is There Any Way To Punish Swatters?


In cases like Weigman’s, prosecutors work around the lack of a swatting law by pressing other charges.

When he was 22, Athol resident Nathan Hanshaw pleaded guilty to making interstate threats, threats to use explosives, and threats to use a firearm. His sentence was light compared to Weigman’s: 30 months in prison because he cooperated with authorities who were investigating other computer-related crimes, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. He is expected to be released this year.

Depending on the case, swatters can face federal charges of conspiracy, which carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and charges of fraud, which have a maximum of 20 years.

If the swatters are out of the country, however, they are much harder to prosecute.

Framingham public information officer Stephen Cronin said officers might need to seek help from Interpol or the U.S. State Department, and hope the swatter’s home country has an interdiction treaty with the U.S.

Barnstable State Rep. Tim Whelan co-sponsored a swatting bill in January. If passed, the law would make swatting punishable by up to 2.5 years in jail. Swatters could also face fines starting at $2,500.

Whelan, a 26-year law enforcement veteran, said he responded to many false alarms in his career. He said police often don’t have time to consider whether a call is a hoax.

“The fault in no way rests with the response and instead rests completely with the disturbed individual who made this false report,’’ he said.

How Much Is This Costing Us?

If taxpayers want to know how much this is costing them, they’re out of luck.

Most SWAT teams in Massachusetts don’t belong to any one police department. Instead, they’re operated by non-profit groups funded by law enforcement. That means they’re considered private agencies, and they don’t have to share their records with the public.

So, even though local and federal taxpayers fund these SWAT teams, taxpayers have no way of knowing how often they’re used, why they’re used, or who they’re used against.

In 2014, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against one of these organizations to try to get access to its records. Christopher Ott of the Massachusetts ACLU said the case is still pending, and a hearing is scheduled for June.

Who Gets Swatted?

It’s not just celebrities and seemingly random targets. A swatting subculture infests the videogaming world, especially among those who livestream their games. To some, there’s nothing funnier than ambushing a game of “Call of Duty’’with live police officers yelling “hands up.’’

You don’t have to look too hard on YouTube to find swatting videos like this one:

Sometimes the target of a swatting is unclear. In Hopkinton, the night before Easter Sunday, residents prepared to attend the Easter Eve service at St. John the Evangelist Parish while, across the street, others picked up pies from Vinny’s Pizza.

A man called police and said he was holed up in the nearby Hopkinton Public Library with two hostages and a bomb.

It turned out there were no hostages and no bomb, but it took police more than two hours to be sure. By then, church services had been cancelled, and Vinny’s was forced to temporarily close. The police response included three or four unmarked SWAT cars, and dozens of agents, including a sniper perched on top of a nearby building and a bomb-sniffing dog.

Sergeant Joe Bennett of the Hopkinton Police Department said prosecutors are still investigating, and aren’t sure of the caller’s motive.

“These calls take resources that would and should be used for true emergencies,’’ Bennett said. “It’s a tremendous waste …. We would absolutely support any legislation that strengthens the penalties against incidents such as this.’’

What Now?

The Los Angeles Police Department stopped releasing information about swats to discourage copycats and swatters who delight in publicity. Massachusetts police aren’t following that approach.

“We have not gone in that direction and won’t unless until we get more information that that’s helpful,’’ Cronin said. “For now, it’s important to us to maintain transparency between the department and the public. Oftentimes getting the story out might help identify the perpetrator.’’

No one has been charged in the swatting incident at the Waithe house.

The caller in that case identified himself as Peter, which is the first name of Peter Waithe, who lives in the home with Irandi and his mother. The real Peter Waithe arrived home after the swatting to find a few lingering police cars. He worried something had happened to his mother.

“Everything was fine, and the police took a few numbers that might be of interest from my caller ID,’’ he said. “But we have no idea who did this. Obviously it was a hoax.’’

Police are still looking for the swatter. He could be anywhere.