FBI identifies suspect in Riverside, California, who targeted elementary schools, suicide help lines and Nashville Airport. It comes after a barrage of “swatting” calls has caused chaos across America.
Earlier this year, Sandy Hook, the scene of America’s deadliest school shooting that left 26 dead, received a voicemail. The caller claimed he had placed bombs around the school, targeting first graders and kindergarteners. The police were called, surveillance footage reviewed, and it was determined there was no imminent threat to life.
But the call was part of a spree of hoax calls in which the voice on the other end claimed to be the “next mass shooter of 2023,” leading to lockdowns and police raids at seven schools across Riverside County and San Bernardino County, California, in January and February this year, according to a search warrant obtained by Forbes. It details an FBI investigation that comes amidst a wave of hoax calls that have led to panic across American schools throughout the last year. Per a Washington Post report this week, as many as 500 schools have been hit by hoax shooting calls in the last 18 months.
Whilst investigators in those cases have struggled to find the perpetrator, in California, the FBI has a named suspect. Agents gathered evidence suggesting the suspect — a Riverside resident — was trying to “swat” the son of his former property manager, a Navy reservist. With so-called “swatting,” the perpetrator calls an institution or 911 and tries to get cops to send armed police to a target residence, usually as a dangerous prank. In the California case, the caller identified himself as the Navy reservist, though no motive was revealed. (As no charges have yet been filed, Forbes is withholding the suspect and victim names. The Department of Justice declined to comment.)
The Californian suspect allegedly made at least 15 hoax calls, which also targeted a number of suicide hotlines and mental health facilities, as well as an international airport, according to the FBI. That included calls to the Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles County and the Veterans Affairs Veterans Crisis Line in New York, during which the man threatened to kill himself and his daughters, providing an address in Riverside. When Riverside Police Department in California checked that address, they found no disturbance, just a man and a woman, the former identifying himself as the Navy reservist.
Ten minutes after calling Sandy Hook, the same number was used to contact Nashville International Airport. The caller, using the Navy reservist’s name, claimed he had planted a bomb at the airport and on a plane, claiming it was being done on behalf of terror group ISIS. The hoax led airport staff to search aircraft and individuals for any sign of a threat to life. None was found.
The caller tried to cover their tracks by using anonymous contact details and temporary numbers via Voice over Internet Protocol service TextNow, registered using seven different Google Gmail accounts. But the FBI said it managed to find a digital trail that led them to the identity of a 30-year-old suspect. A data request to Google revealed six of the seven email accounts were accessed by the same mobile device. The cell provider for that phone was the stepfather of the suspect, while three of the Google accounts also had a linked MasterCard credit card carrying the latter’s name.
Investigators are now closing in on their suspect, carrying out physical surveillance on him at his residence. The warrant also asked for location information for a number the FBI believes the suspect has been using.
It wouldn’t be the agency’s first success this year in deanonymizing a swatter. In a case that highlighted the recent swatter scourge, in late September, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of a Peruvian who had made hoax bomb threats to more than 150 school districts, synagogues, airports and hospitals, as well as a shopping mall earlier that month. The calls led to school evacuations and a lockdown of a hospital.
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