{"id":13841,"date":"2025-01-10T01:20:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T01:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=13841"},"modified":"2025-01-10T01:20:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T01:20:53","slug":"the-school-shootings-were-fake-the-terror-was-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=13841","title":{"rendered":"The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Then, between Christmas Eve and New Year\u2019s, came a new deluge of swattings. They hit close to a hundred politicians and law enforcement officials in a brazen, coordinated campaign: US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida. One of the hoax calls, court documents would later state, caused a car accident that resulted in serious injuries.<\/p>\n

But this time, the voice on the calls wasn\u2019t Torswats. Instead, according to US prosecutors, he orchestrated the operation, providing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the targets to a 21-year-old and a 26-year-old from Serbia and Romania who allegedly organized and carried out the swatting scheme with lines Torswats fed to them.<\/p>\n

It was a familiar script. \u201cI shot my wife in the head with my AR-15,\u201d a man identifying himself as \u201cJames\u201d said in one such call, targeting the home of Georgia state senator John Albers. He told dispatchers that he had caught his wife sleeping with another man and, after killing her, had taken the man hostage. \u201cI\u2019ll release him for $10,000 in cash,\u201d he added, threatening to detonate pipe bombs and blow up the house if his demands weren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n

Finally, Phillips called Dennis and told him that the FBI had a plan to arrest Torswats. And they needed Dennis\u2019 help.<\/p>\n

According to the plan, the bureau would ask its teen suspect\u2019s father to come in to a local police station to retrieve the computers they\u2019d seized. While the father was there, Phillips explained, Dennis should use his old aggrieved ex-husband persona and start another Telegram conversation with Torswats about swatting his ex-wife. Then he should stall for as long as possible to keep Torswats at his computer, logged in to his accounts\u2014so police could burst in and arrest him. Dennis, despite being sick with Covid, agreed.<\/p>\n

Instead, to his and the FBI\u2019s surprise, Torswats accompanied his father to the police station to pick up his devices. The cops quietly arrested him on the spot. As his nemesis was finally taken into custody<\/a>, Dennis was too ill to celebrate.<\/p>\n

The FBI and Justice Department both declined WIRED\u2019s request for comment, which included questions about why the FBI had taken so many months after learning Torswats\u2019 name\u2014even after searching his house\u2014to arrest him.<\/p>\n

Nearly two years into his investigation, Dennis finally learned the teen\u2019s name: Alan Filion. He saw photos of Filion for the first time and mentally replaced the image of Dshocker\u2019s face with that of the actual alleged swatter teen he\u2019d been hunting. Like Dshocker, Filion was big. He had long, lank brown hair. In photos, he wore a wide-eyed, innocent expression.<\/p>\n

At the time of his arrest, Filion was 17 years old. When Dennis\u2019 case had begun, Filion had been only 15.<\/p>\n

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