FBI: 'Swatting' Cases Across The Country May Be Copycats

Aug. 10, 2011 -- At 9:18 p.m. on Aug. 3, the San Francisco Police Department received a call from a man reporting that his brother was being held hostage in his own home. After three hours of trying to reach the victims, SWAT teams burst into the house.

Once inside, they found a husband and wife in their mid-thirties with their two small children, spending a quiet evening at home.

"There was no merit to any kidnapping or actual hostage situation," said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a public information officer for the San Francisco Police.

The SFPD had been the victim of "swatting": placing prank phone calls to police to lure them to mobilize SWAT teams to respond to fake hostage situations.

Swatting has spread throughout the United States and Canada in recent months.

"Once you catch a swatter or a group that is committing these crimes, they are usually responsible for multiple swatting incidents," said Kevin Kolbye, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas office, which headed the first federal swatting case in 2007. Kolbye has been piecing together what appeared to be isolated swatting cases around the country since 2004.

In the past, offenders have solicited private information about their intended victims from phone companies and slipped the victims' numbers into the caller ID of the 911 emergency system -- a method called spoofing.

But according to Kolbye, it doesn't take an experienced hacker to trigger a fake hostage situation and mobilize SWAT teams.

"It's not like it's a hard crime," he said. "It just takes somebody who has a little bit of savvy about computers and telephone systems."

Recent swatting incidents may be copycats of earlier crimes, Kolbye said, instigated by past offenders who brag about their methods on blogs.

"I think you find a lot of copycat violations," Kolbye said. "Same as you find when a highly publicized serial killer is around, you find a lot of copycatting. So when crimes receive national attention, you find people who are intrigued with this type of crime and they emulate it."