Blake Dowling
A couple of years ago, we watched a CIA thriller called “The Condor,” and I am pretty sure that is the first time I heard the phrase “swatting.”
The son of one of the characters disliked the head of the CIA, so he reported to the police that someone had been kidnapped at his house.
The police then rolled the SWAT team to deal with it. Hence the term describes the insidious prank of sending the police and/or SWAT team to a specific location — swatting.
As far back as 2008, the FBI started using the term swatting; it was included in the dictionary in 2015. The first big case on record was from Kansas in 2017.
There was a feud between online gamers, and one said they would “swat” the other because of their online behavior.
The other party provided a fake address during a game session, which was given to the police.
A fatality followed; the person who made the prank call/swatting is still in jail for their crime.
Here in Florida, I discussed with ABC7 News in Sarasota this week an incident on Tuesday on the campus of USF Sarasota-Manatee. An emergency notification was sent out around 11 a.m. to all students that there was an “active shooter” on campus and police were quickly dispatched. Within minutes of arrival, it was determined to be a hoax, and no one was injured.
In Tallahassee this week, police were also alerted to an “active shooter” on the campus of Tallahassee Community College. Authorities were dispatched and the report was also found to be false. Other swatting prank calls were reported at Florida International University and another at the Galen School of Nursing in St. Petersburg.
Technology has made this crime just about untraceable.
Spoofing apps like Bluff My Call make calls look like they are coming from someone else. Plus, services like Text Now, which provide users a phone service via an app they can use over Wi-Fi, give a unique and anonymous phone number to be used as the caller wishes, with no trail.
Why are people doing this?
Unlike hacking and other cyber incidents, there is no monetary payout, only the prank itself. It is finals week, so that is certainly top of mind regarding my detective work. This could be a bunch of students trying to get out of a test.
My other thought was that the calls were a distraction while a major crime is committed elsewhere, but my money is on option one.
Things have certainly escalated since the phone pranks of my youth. We would usually call the neighbors and say something dumb like: “Is your refrigerator running?” If yes, “You better go catch it,” laugh and hang up.
Thank you to the Jerky Boys and The Simpsons for the negative influences on impressionable youth.
If you hear or see anyone swatting or prank calling first responders for anything, report them to FDLE or the FBI immediately. We must all support law enforcement, so they are there when needed, not chasing down hoaxes.
While a prank call to your neighbor about a refrigerator running in 1988 might have been innocent, a prank call involving swatting in 2023 could be a matter of life and death.
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Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and can be reached at [email protected].
