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Teenager whose prank calls sent armed SWAT teams to dozens of US homes got 16 months

A single Canadian teenager made dozens of prank phone calls to police throughout the U.S., sending SWAT teams to hold innocent individuals at gunpoint at their homes as authorities investigated his false claims of dangerous crimes in progress.

But because of both legal loopholes and the teen’s location on the other side of the border, he operated with virtual impunity for months, the New York Times (reg. req.) reports.

The youth, known by his screen name “Obnoxious,” targeted literally dozens of young women in the online gaming community for so-called swatting attacks. However, it took 40 such documented incidents over a period of less than six months before a detective sergeant in a suburban Atlanta police department was able to interest the FBI in pursuing an investigation of a known suspect—Obnoxious—in all of the cases, the newspaper says in a lengthy article.

The detective, B.A. Finley of the Johns Creek Police Department in Georgia, had been told to do whatever it took to solve the local case after the same home was targeted twice in less than two weeks with false claims of criminal activity calling for a SWAT team response. Finley spent some 1,000 hours on the probe.

Then, even after the FBI helped Finley put together documentation and contacted Canadian authorities in British Columbia, they said they didn’t have enough to justify a search warrant, the Times reports. Local police in the Vancouver suburb in which the teen lived told Finley the youth had already been arrested in an apparently unrelated case and released on bail, on condition that he not use the Internet.

Finally, last December, when Obnoxious, in a marathon session of more than eight hours, live-streamed video of two hoax SWAT calls to Ohio cities on Twitter and other social media sites, those involved in various aspects of the investigation on both sides of the border alerted each other, tuned in, and got the evidence needed to prosecute.

Obnoxious was charged in Canada with 46 counts, including criminal harassment, and pleaded guilty to 23, the Times reports. He was sentenced to 16 months behind bars. He is expected to be released in March, when he will be 18 years old.

In the U.S., prosecution also would have been difficult, the newspaper says. Laws don’t specifically address swatting as a crime; those who are held criminally accountable often are charged with misdemeanors; and the likelihood of extraditing Obnoxious would have been minimal. However, some federal lawmakers have recently introduced bills to ramp up the penalties for swatting.

Related coverage:

Daily Dot: “Congress introduces bill to criminalize swatting”

The Verge: “New bill would crack down on ‘swatting’ hoaxes “

See also:

ABAJournal.com: “Hacker Gets 5 Years for Prank 911 Calls Resulting in SWAT Team Raids”