Authorities say a practice known as “swatting” sends SWAT teams to people’s homes and has now become a way for players of combat-themed video games to retaliate against opponents while thousands of spectators watch. The perpetrators can watch their criminal act unfold in a window that shows a live video image of other players.
“It’s like creating your own episode of Cops,” said John Grohol, a research psychologist who studies online behavior, referring to the long-running reality TV show that follows officers on patrol.
The players, who are often many kilometers or states away, look up their opponent’s addresses in telephone directories, sometimes using services that can find unlisted numbers. They also exploit online programs that trick emergency dispatchers into believing the call is coming from the victim’s phone or address. All the while, they conceal their own identities and locations.
Authorities spent an estimated US$100,000 in April to send more than 60 officers on a falsified call in Long Beach, New York. Investigators said the caller was upset over losing a game of Call of Duty when he called police using Skype. SWAT officers found only a teenager wearing headphones.
In Bradenton, Florida, at least 15 officers showed up at the home of a professional video game player on Aug. 31 after a caller posing as his young daughter phoned in a report that he was armed and drunk. Instead, they found him playing Minecraft for a live audience over Twitch.tv, an online network.
“The officers responding do not know, other than the information they’re getting over the radio, exactly what is going on,” Bradenton police Captain William Fowler said.
Less than a week later, police received another bogus call routed through the man’s telephone that made it appear as though he had called in a bomb threat to a Bradenton gas station.
A Connecticut man was arrested on Wednesday last week on federal charges that he made swatting calls there and in at least four other states. Authorities say Matthew Tollis, 21, belonged to a group that referred to itself as TeAM Crucifix or Die. Other members live in the UK, the FBI said, which is still trying to learn their identities.
“You can literally do it from around the world,” assistant professor of computer science at New York University Justin Cappos said. “It can be very challenging [to solve] depending on the sophistication of the person doing it.”
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