Prank 911Calls Send SWAT Teams to Unsuspecting Homes

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FOXNews.com - Prank 911Calls Send SWAT Teams to Unsuspecting Homes - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

Sunday, February 01, 2009


Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.

Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.

The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.

They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.

The AP examined hundreds of pages of court documents and law-enforcement transcripts, listened to audio of "swatting" calls, and interviewed two dozen security experts, investigators, defense lawyers, victims and perpetrators.

While Doug and Stacey Bates were cuffed on the ground that night in March 2007, 18-year-old Randal Ellis, living with his parents in Mukilteo, Wash., was nearly finished with the 27-minute yarn about a drug-fueled murder that brought the Orange County Sheriff's Department SWAT team to the Bateses' home.

In a grisly sounding call to 911, Ellis was putting an Internet-based phone service for the hearing-impaired to nefarious use. By entering bogus information about his location, Ellis was able to make it seem to the 911 operator as if he was calling from inside the Bateses' home. He said he was high on drugs and had just shot his sister.

According to prosecutors, Ellis picked the Bates family at random, as he did with all of the 185 calls investigators say he made to 911 operators around the country.

"If I would have had a gun in my hand, I probably would have been shot," said Doug Bates, 38. Last March, Ellis was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to five felony counts, including computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence and falsely reporting a crime.

In a separate, multistate case prosecuted by federal authorities in Dallas, eight people were charged with orchestrating up to 300 "swatting" calls to victims they met on telephone party chat lines. The three ringleaders were each sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to 2 1/2 years. One defendant pleaded guilty last week and could get a 13-year sentence. The remaining two are set to go on trial in February.

A similar case was reported in Salinas, Calif., where officers surrounded an apartment where a call had come in claiming men with assault rifles were trying to break in. In Hiawatha, Iowa, fake calls about a workplace shooting included realistic gunshot sounds and moaning in the background. In November, a teenage hacker from Worcester, Mass., pleaded guilty to a five-month swatting spree including a bomb threat and report of an armed gunman that caused two schools to be evacuated.

Many times, however, swats don't get fully investigated or reported.

Orange County Sheriff's detective Brian Sims spent weeks serving search warrants on Internet providers before he identified Ellis through his numeric computer identifier, known as an IP address.

Law enforcement hopes lengthy prison terms will deter would-be swatters. Technology alone isn't enough to stop the crimes.

Unlike calls that come from landline phones, which are registered to a fixed physical address and display that on 911 dispatchers' screens, calls coming from people's computers, or even calls from landline or cell phones that are routed through spoofing services, could appear to be originating from anywhere.

Scores of Caller ID spoofing services have sprung up, offering to disguise callers' origins for a fee. All anybody needs to do is pony up for a certain number of minutes, punch in a PIN code and specify whom they're calling and what they'd like the Caller ID to display.

Spoofing Caller ID is perfectly legal. Legitimate businesses use the technology to project a single callback number for an entire office, or to let executives working from home cloak their home numbers when making outgoing calls.

At the same time, criminals have latched onto the technique to get revenge on rivals or get their kicks by harassing strangers.

"We're not able to cope with this very well," said Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the National Emergency Number Association, the 911 system's industry group. "We're just hoping this doesn't become a widespread hobby."

The 911 system was built on the idea it could trust the information it was receiving from callers. Upgrading the system to accommodate new technologies can be a huge task.

Gary Allen, editor of Dispatch Monthly, a Berkeley, Calif.-based magazine focused on public-safety communications centers, said dispatchers are "totally at the mercy of the people who call" and the fact they don't have technology to identify which incoming calls are from Internet-based sources.

Allen said upgrading the communications centers' computers to flash an Internet caller's IP address could be helpful in thwarting fraudulent calls. He said an even simpler fix, tweaking the computers to identify calls from Internet telephone services and flash the name of the service provider to dispatchers, can cost under $5,000, but is usually still too costly for many communications centers.

But because this style of fraudulent calls is so new, and many emergency-dispatch centers receive few Internet calls in the first place, those upgrades are not frequently done.

Swatting calls place an immense strain on responding departments. The Orange County Sheriff's Department deployed about 30 people to the Bateses' home, including a SWAT team, a helicopter and K-9 units. It cost the department $14,700.

They take their toll on victims, too.

Tony Messina, a construction worker from Salina, N.Y., was swatted three times by the gang broken up by the federal authorities in Dallas. He was even arrested as the result of one call, because authorities found weapons he wasn't supposed to have while they were searching the house.

Messina had made some enemies on a party line he frequented to flirt with women. Some guys disliked him and out of jealousy, he says, they started swatting him.

The first time, he was home alone with his two poodles when officers swarmed his backyard at 6 a.m. According to Messina, the callers said he had "killed a hooker and sliced her ear to ear, blood all over the place, I'm doing drugs and if you police come over here I'm going to kill you, too." After a few hours at the police station, he was let go.

Two weeks later, he was detained outside his house. A month later, he was in bed watching TV when he saw someone with a flashlight at his window. He went outside and was handcuffed while deputies searched his house and car.

Messina had been told to call 911 himself if the swatting calls happened again, and when the deputies realized it was another fraudulent call, Messina was let go. He said he suffered bruised ribs that kept him out of work for a month and a half.

Investigators say swatters are usually motivated by a mixture of ego and malice, a desire for revenge and domination over rivals.

Jason Trowbridge, one of the defendants currently serving a five-year sentence, told the AP in a series of letters from prison that the attacks started with the standard fare of prank callers — sending pizzas and locksmiths to victims' homes — escalated to shutting the power and water off and eventually led to swatting.

"Nobody ever thought anyone would get hurt or die from a SWAT call," he said.

This is a first that I've ever seen and heard of anything like this! Sure hope we don't lose Relay's because of the stupidity of hearing people who think it's funny to do acts like this, using a system that we depend on. :roll:
 
Disgusting behavior! Ugh!
 
I wouldn't have posted this if Relay wasn't involved as it's mentioned in the article. I was quite shocked.
 
That was a very sick and lame ass joke ever pulled. It's not even at least abit funny at all.

Whoever made that call deserve to get his knife shoved up his ass. WAY up his ass.
 
FOXNews.com - Prank 911Calls Send SWAT Teams to Unsuspecting Homes - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

Sunday, February 01, 2009

In a separate, multistate case prosecuted by federal authorities in Dallas, eight people were charged with orchestrating up to 300 "swatting" calls to victims they met on telephone party chat lines. The three ringleaders were each sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to 2 1/2 years. One defendant pleaded guilty last week and could get a 13-year sentence. The remaining two are set to go on trial in February.

13 years is not enough to teach anyone like those people a lesson. I think the sentences should be much lengthier and much harsher. I would feel much better if it was 50 years. Harsh, I know, but shit like this should NOT be tolerated! Plus, they took advantage of our relay services to commit these crimes. Because of this, many 911 call centers may be wary of genuine 911 calls coming from honest deaf people needing emergency services, and as a result, we may not get the emergency services we need as quickly as possible, or even at all. Someone could suffer a heart attack and a deaf person attempting to help the victim is going to have to try to call 911 on a relay service, and may be ignored or the response time may be longer because they have to figure out whether the call is genuine or if this is a prank call. As a result, the person suffering a heart attack may not get the emergency treatment needed to save his or her life, and could die! This is like murder, murder by proxy or something. You know what I mean? Indirect murder. So, I think the person committing the crime should get really lengthy sentences, such as 50 years, and if the prank call results in a death of someone who the police thought was a criminal and ended up killing that person because they thought that person was going to hurt someone or was going to try to harm the police when all that person was doing was protecting himself/herself because he/she was confused as to what was going on because he/she was a victim of that prank call, then the sentence should be for LIFE with absolutely NO chance of ever getting parole or anything at all, no freedom EVER AGAIN. If the consequences of the crimes becomes much harsher for the pranksters, then maybe in the future the pranksters will think twice before doing such a thing as this! :mad2: I am not satisfied with 13 years. That is not enough! :mad2:
 
i'm shocked too. speechles, in fac tl.

Yeah. This is scary. I hope no one will do this to me. I don't want to get hurt by the police just because some asshole 2,000 miles away who thinks this is funny decides to make me her/his victim and since I am deaf, the police could think I am ignoring them when they are trying to give me commands ("walk backwards to the sound of my voice, put your hands behind your head, lace your hands, lay down on the ground, etc") and as a result end up tasering me or shooting me or harming me in some way. :Ohno:
 
That was a very sick and lame ass joke ever pulled. It's not even at least abit funny at all.

Whoever made that call deserve to get his knife shoved up his ass. WAY up his ass.

ouch but it's a boy... an 18 years old clueless fool.
 
Disgusting behavior! Ugh!

I absolutely agree. This makes me angry and disgusted and upset. In fact, I have so many unpleasant feelings about this that it would fill up an entire page. :mad2:

Those pranksters are extremely immature and should be considered criminals for what they did!
 
ouch but it's a boy... an 18 years old clueless fool.

Clueless?

If he's 18, he SHOULD have known better, being an adult. :nono: :mad2:

There is absolutely NO excuse for this kind of pranks. He scared the hell out of a poor innocent family. He completely terrified them! I feel very sorry for that poor family. :(
 
ouch but it's a boy... an 18 years old clueless fool.

Clueless? Not quite. This individual knew enough to pull it off, and likely did it deliberately. That's not clueless at all in my mind. That's 'Morality chip' failure, my friend.
What your likening it to is a spur of the moment execution of an act of drunken stupidity. But that's not what this is - This had A LOT more effort invested into it in order to fool authorities. Think about that for a moment... When you *actually* have to consider how to do something like this, that benchmark, is why anyone who does something like this needs a harsh boot applied to their rump for a heavy deposit in jail.
 
They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems

It's not great technology to track. I fear that it would do the same thing on videophone that many deaf are depend it. See, dirtydie, see? It sucks balls.
 
13 years is not enough to teach anyone like those people a lesson. I think the sentences should be much lengthier and much harsher. I would feel much better if it was 50 years. Harsh, I know, but shit like this should NOT be tolerated! Plus, they took advantage of our relay services to commit these crimes. Because of this, many 911 call centers may be wary of genuine 911 calls coming from honest deaf people needing emergency services, and as a result, we may not get the emergency services we need as quickly as possible, or even at all. Someone could suffer a heart attack and a deaf person attempting to help the victim is going to have to try to call 911 on a relay service, and may be ignored or the response time may be longer because they have to figure out whether the call is genuine or if this is a prank call. As a result, the person suffering a heart attack may not get the emergency treatment needed to save his or her life, and could die! This is like murder, murder by proxy or something. You know what I mean? Indirect murder. So, I think the person committing the crime should get really lengthy sentences, such as 50 years, and if the prank call results in a death of someone who the police thought was a criminal and ended up killing that person because they thought that person was going to hurt someone or was going to try to harm the police when all that person was doing was protecting himself/herself because he/she was confused as to what was going on because he/she was a victim of that prank call, then the sentence should be for LIFE with absolutely NO chance of ever getting parole or anything at all, no freedom EVER AGAIN. If the consequences of the crimes becomes much harsher for the pranksters, then maybe in the future the pranksters will think twice before doing such a thing as this! :mad2: I am not satisfied with 13 years. That is not enough! :mad2:

Word! :mad:

I have not much left to say for this news... All I said is disgusting and disgraceful to see like that, 50 years should be best option for various reasons... >:/
 
Clueless?

If he's 18, he SHOULD have known better, being an adult. :nono: :mad2:

There is absolutely NO excuse for this kind of pranks. He scared the hell out of a poor innocent family. He completely terrified them! I feel very sorry for that poor family. :(

Clueless? Not quite. This individual knew enough to pull it off, and likely did it deliberately. That's not clueless at all in my mind. That's 'Morality chip' failure, my friend.
What your likening it to is a spur of the moment execution of an act of drunken stupidity. But that's not what this is - This had A LOT more effort invested into it in order to fool authorities. Think about that for a moment... When you *actually* have to consider how to do something like this, that benchmark, is why anyone who does something like this needs a harsh boot applied to their rump for a heavy deposit in jail.

not all 18 years old are matured. he's probably just an idiot who thinks everything in life's funny - a cartoonistic view of life. We don't know anything about him. Is he a very lonely hermit? is he a vengeful victim of bully? :dunno:
 
not all 18 years old are matured. he's probably just an idiot who thinks everything in life's funny - a cartoonistic view of life. We don't know anything about him. Is he a very lonely hermit? is he a vengeful victim of bully? :dunno:

Good ponderings.
 
not all 18 years old are matured. he's probably just an idiot who thinks everything in life's funny - a cartoonistic view of life. We don't know anything about him. Is he a very lonely hermit? is he a vengeful victim of bully? :dunno:

All 18 years olds needs to wake up the day they turn 18. If they haven't, and end up committing a crime, then that's a lack of responsibility, and they therefore should be disciplined for it. I don't care if this guy was "just an idiot", he still completely terrified a poor family with very small children. He should learn that what he did was NOT funny and he should realize how much fear he caused this family to experience. And, there is absolutely NO excuse for what he did, even if he was a vengeful victim of a bully. If he was a victim of a bully, and is suffering because of it, and wants revenge, he should have gone to a therapist and gotten psychiatric help for it instead of terrifying a random family with small children 1,200 miles away who has done absolutely nothing to this guy. If this guy is a lonely hermit, then maybe he needs to get out and socialize at a club or something. Unless this guy is agoraphobic, then in this case, he needs to seek psychiatric help for that. There was NO reason for this guy to terrify a family with small children like that.
 
Wow, I'm surprised about the responses on this thread, to say the least. :shock: I think 50 years is too long and at the same time, I think 13 years is too long. Perhaps this 18-year old punk needs to pay for this out of his pocket and, since he used his mommy and daddy's phone line/internet connection, they can help pay. Kinda like an ADA violation, which is unappealable, the company who gets one can't appeal, this kid should pay every dollar that it cost, not only the police, but to the people affected by his immaturity -- lost wages, counseling, et al. THAT would be the only sentence, coming short of cutting off both his index fingers, that I'd go along with.
 
stupid. actually 1-2 deaf poker game parties were busted by police in MC and PG (IIRC) for having too many cars between the hours of 2-5am (suspicious activity rules).
 
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