An 18-year-old man from Lancaster, California, was sentenced to four years in prison Tuesday for hundreds of “swatting” calls in which he made false threats of violence across the country.

Alan Filion started making the threats as a minor. Between August 2022 and January 2024, he called in more than 375 threats, many of them resulting in a real police response, involving educational and religious institutions, government officials and other people, the Justice Department said in a release.

Making fake calls threatening bombings or mass shootings as Filion did is also known as “swatting” due to the possibility of a SWAT team responding to what they believe is a legitimate threat of violence.

Filion provided false names to police and claimed both he and some of his victims had or were preparing to commit violent acts. He bragged in one online message that he “‘usually get[s] the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies,’” the DOJ said.

Filion was arrested in January 2024 following an investigation into a May 2023 call he made in which he claimed to have pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and two guns in preparation for killing everyone at a house of worship in Sanford, Florida. 

The target was the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque, according to The Daytona Beach News-Journal.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to four charges of making interstate threats to injure.

In addition to the Sanford call, Filion also pleaded guilty to three other swatting calls. In October 2022, he claimed to have planted bombs throughout a high school in the state of Washington, and also said he was going to commit a shooting there. That school was Anacortes High School, according to The Spokesman-Review.

In May 2023, the DOJ said, he made a call claiming to have planted bombs in the walls and ceilings of a residential building at a historically black university in Florida. 

Federal officials did not say which Florida HBCU was targeted, but there was a bomb threat made at Florida A&M University in May 2023, according to the News-Journal.

The fourth call involved calling a police dispatch number in western Texas. Filion falsely claimed the identity of a senior member of federal law enforcement, provided that person’s real address, claimed to have committed matricide and further threatened to kill any cops that responded to the scene. The DOJ did not name the victim.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.