After an investigation that lasted many months following hundreds of incidents of so-called swatting and bomb threats across the United States, authorities captured a 17-year-old suspect named Alan Winston Fillion from California.
We will tell about the serial criminal and the complex way in which he was captured with the help of Claude.
For months, Fillion used to call the emergency services in the US, and report fictitious emergencies at other people's addresses or imaginary bombs located at different addresses, in order to prompt the emergency services to go to the same places - usually the homes of gamers with whom he played online games. The investigators needed retracing Fillion's steps through several major online platforms, which eventually led them to his doorstep in Lancaster, California.
A private investigator who worked with swatting victims - that is, people whose homes emergency forces came to following fake calls - gave the FBI key details, which included the name of a YouTube channel and the IP address of a user found to be connected to several such incidents.
The researchers reached from his YouTube channel to chats on the gaming-focused communication app Discord with usernames related to the Lord of the Rings world.
Warrants for Discord and Alphabet, YouTube's parent company, revealed that several accounts linked to the investigation used the same IP address (Internet Device Address), which is located in Fillion's hometown.
Other Google accounts linked to the same IP address included a history showing searches for bomb threats, school shootings and swatting tactics.
FBI agents raided Fillion's home in July 2022, seizing phones and computers that included evidence of Telegram activity, photos shared to a swatting channel, and email addresses linked to the Google accounts in question.
All the details of the case remained confidential until they were published in recent weeks as part of the court case against Fillion, which was tried in Florida following a claim by a mosque to which Fillion sent the authorities.
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