Armed police raid a flat in north London, only to find the call about the incident had been a prank.

In a suburban outer London a man sits playing computer games while his wife is putting their children to bed.

Hearing a commotion outside, the wife looks out the window and sees flashing blue lights.

What happens next is like something out of a television drama.

Armed police swarmed the house in August, barking questions at the woman and her husband - are there weapons on the property? Is she all right? Where are the children?

It was 11pm and she "was beyond confused", according to The Daily Mail.

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"Everyone was carrying a gun. They had little cutaway bits so you could see the bullets. My eldest asked one of the officers if he could have a go on his gun and went to touch it," she said.

Outside, as more armed police stood guard, and officers prepared to arrest her husband. It was then, the police began to realise something was wrong — the man in front of them did not fit the description of the gun-toting madman that had been phoned in as an anonymous tip.

It was a hoax. The family were victims of 'swatting' - in which caller tricks police into sending armed officers to raid a residential home in the belief a serious crime is happening there.

'Swatting' occurs rarely in the UK, but is common in the US. All strands of society have been affected by the practice.

Actors Tom Cruise and Ashton Kutcher have been targeted, as have singers Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Justin Timberlake. In 2013, a 12-year-old California boy admitted to 'swatting' Kutcher and Bieber.

Swatting gets its name from "Special Weapons and Tatics" (SWAT) teams sent to deal with hostage situations in the US. It's essentially a form of online trolling in which game players seek revenge in the real world for things that happened online.

The real danger is that a police raid is a trigger pull away from tragedy. And that is the point made clear by the woman involved in the London incident, which occurred last August.

"What if my husband had made a sudden move or resisted in some way?", she said to New Statesman . "What if my eldest had grabbed the gun instead of gently reaching for it?"

Though rare in the UK, they are not the first family to fall victim to the stunt. Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts has also been targeted.

Mumsnet, a forum for parents, attracted attention in 2015 from an unknown group of individuals who claimed they disliked what they described as the 'anti-father' sentiment of the site.

The group set up fake user profile and started bombarding the sites wth provocative posts. Things escalated and the group, callings itself DadSecurity, carried out cyber attacks on the site, shutting it down.

Worse was to come.

A 999 call was made in August 2015 claiming a woman had been killed at a North London home. A second caller told police that the Roberts' children had been taken hostage at the same address. Police responded quickly only to find the au pair home with the children, and no-one dangerous in sight.

And there was the second swatting as one the family mentioned earlier. The victim involved in that incident had exchanged a number of critical messages with one of those who claimed responsibility for the initial hoax calls. She had been warned that they had a big 'surprise' in store for her, too.

In the wake of the incidents, Roberts has called for the police to take the matter as seriously as they would do in the US.

In the UK anyone making hoax calls to the police can face a prison sentence of up to six month. In the US, authorities are working on a bill that impose up to a 20-year prison sentence and heavy fines for pulling such a stunt.