Prison for Conn. man in St. John Vianney, Allentown HS swatting

A series of so-called “swatting” incidents at schools in several states, including two high schools in Monmouth County, led to a federal prison term Tuesday for a Connecticut man who orchestrated the hoax threats.

Chief U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall, sitting in New Haven, Connecticut, sentenced Matthew Tollis, 22, of Wethersfield to 12 months and one day in federal prison for the series of threats in 2014 to schools that included St. John Vianney High School in Holmdel and Allentown High School.

A fake threat was called in to St. John Vianney High School on Jan. 15, 2014, by a person claiming he was accosted in a school bathroom by a masked gunman with sarin gas who was threatening to blow up the school, according to court documents.

Scores of police descended on the high school with guns drawn that day to look for an armed intruder and bombs. A student hiding behind a door suffered a concussion during the incident when a law enforcement officer breached the door, authorities said.

The following day, some 3,000 students in the Upper Freehold Regional School District were evacuated after someone called the district’s Allentown High School and falsely claimed there was a bomb in a lavatory, authorities said.

The practice of making hoax calls to elicit evacuations and deployments of SWAT teams, bomb squads and other police units has come to be known as swatting.

Authorities said Tollis was a member of a group of Microsoft X-Box gamers that used Skype, an Internet communication device, to make the hoax threats about bombs, hostage taking, firearms and mass murder, authorities said. Tollis was identified as a participant in at least six incidents, authorities said. Some of them included swatting calls to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Boston University, the University of Connecticut, the two New Jersey high schools and a high school in Texas.

Tolls was arrested on Sept. 3, 2014, on state charges stemming from the University of Connecticut incident on April 4, 2014, which resulted in a three-hour lock-down and a massive police response. He was later charged in federal court in the other incidents. He pleaded guilty in federal court here on June 23 to conspiring to engage in a bomb threat hoax.

“Swatting is not a schoolboy prank,’’ said Deirdre M. Daly, United States attorney for the District of Connecticut. “It’s a federal crime. These hoaxes have expended critical law enforcement resources and caused severe emotional distress for thousands of victims.

“It is our hope that this prosecution and the knowledge that this defendant will serve time in prison and live with a felony conviction for the remainder of his life will deter others from engaging in this immature, dangerous and criminal behavior,’’ Daly said.

The judge ordered Tollis to be on supervised release for three years once he is out of prison. She also ordered him to perform 300 hours of community service.

Tollis has been free on bond and was ordered to report to prison on Nov. 5.

Kathleen Hopkins: (732)643-4202; Khopkins@app.com