Amid deadly incidents, swatting and bomb hoax surge threatens to sap resources and stoke alert fatigue

Precious resources needed to respond to the next campus shooting or other mass-casualty incident could be strained by escalating swatting and bomb threats that intentionally cry wolf to disrupt critical sectors and surge law enforcement to false targets.

Two students were killed and nine wounded when a gunman opened fire in a classroom at Brown University on Saturday afternoon, eliciting a heavy law enforcement response that continues in the search for the shooter.

Yet over the past week, police across the country have also responded to campuses targeted by hoax threats and false reports – crimes that threaten to stretch resources or feed alert fatigue that could dampen reactivity in the event of a real incident.

This morning, Haverford High School in Pennsylvania was evacuated due to a phoned-in bomb threat. Fairfax High School in Virginia was evacuated after a Thursday bomb threat. Matanzas High School in Florida got a bomb threat on Monday. All Platteville School District campuses in Wisconsin were closed Monday because of a Telegram extortion-related bomb threat. Dreher High School and Eau Claire High School in South Carolina were targeted by threats Monday. Arizona City Elementary School in Arizona received a bomb threat left on voicemail Monday morning. Tahquamenon Area Schools in Michigan were locked down due to a Tuesday bomb threat. The Brooklyn Latin School in New York has reportedly received bomb threats “almost every single day” for months.

A former Vassar College student, Nigel Trenh, was arrested last week and charged with allegedly posting on social media in August that a “bomb has been planted” at the school and “there’s an active shooter on campus,” provoking a police response. Prosecutors allege this was “part of a broader pattern of unsolicited threatening and/or harassing communications sent by Trenh to [college] personnel, including e-mails and messages making express reference to on-campus violence and school shootings,” and “continued even after he was questioned by federal law enforcement officers regarding the August 29 bomb hoax.”

From the beginning of this academic year to Sept. 12 there were 45 hoax threats reported by college campuses, impacting about 1.1 million students and costing the affected educational institutions about $62 million, Campus Safety reported.

Schools aren’t alone. Last Thursday, an H-E-B store was targeted by a bomb threat and its Taylor, Texas, shopping center was evacuated. As the holiday shopping season nears the final stretch, a Roeland Park, Kan., Walmart was targeted by a threat Friday as was a Walmart in Clovis, Calif. A building in downtown Austin, Texas, was the target of a threat on Saturday night. Two New Jersey hospitals were locked down after bomb threats last week.

In April, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complain Center (IC3) released an alert about swatting incidents, stressing that it’s “a serious crime that can have deadly consequences due to confusion on the part of victims and responding officials, and that also diverts limited public safety resources from valid emergencies.” There are other consequences, as well, including shuttered stores losing revenue, kids losing classroom time, lasting fear sown by threats intended to terrorize people and doubt cast upon future alerts – which may turn out to be real incidents with lives on the line.

High-profile targets of particular interest to swatters include schools, hospitals, places of worship and transportation hubs such as airports, but people (including a recent surge of swats targeting Indiana lawmakers) and homes may also be targeted. Swats can be a single threat or occur in a coordinated wave encompassing multiple targets.

While swatting or bomb threats can be an expression of personal grievances or targeted harassment, they can also come from cybercriminals looking to make a quick buck.

Selling swats – offering to call a false report into law enforcement, such as a report of an active shooter or a bomb at a certain location, in exchange for payment in virtual currency – can be seen on “The Com” network, described by the FBI as “a primarily English-speaking, international, online ecosystem comprised of multiple interconnected networks whose members, many of whom are minors, engage in a variety of criminal violations” including hacking, inciting or committing violent acts or property crimes, extorting young victims into self-harm or sexual acts, doxing individuals and more.

Those crimes usually don’t occur in distinct lanes: Extortion victims, for example, may be threatened with swatting, while those who are extorting may also be making false threats for compensation, clout or entertainment.

“The more attention a swatting incident gets, the more attention the member receives from the group,” IC3 said of swatting connected to Com.

In July, Evan Strauss, 27, of Moneta, Va., pleaded guilty to conspiracy, cyberstalking, interstate threatening communications, and threats to damage or destroy by means of fire and explosives. Strauss operated a Com group called Purgatory, and a 2024 affidavit includes an underage victim telling investigators that Strauss threatened to “kill her, her family, and her cat” for not sending him nude photos. “He directed her to cut his online name, Reaper, into her thigh. He told her ‘if you don’t, I’m calling SWAT on your house right now,'” the affidavit states.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland said at the time of Strauss’ guilty plea that Purgatory “used multiple online social-media platforms, including Telegram and Instagram, to coordinate and plan swatting and doxxing activities and to announce and brag about swats that they conducted.” The swatters made Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls to police departments in an effort to obscure their identities.

“As part of the scheme, Strauss called the Newark Delaware Police Department and falsely claimed that he heard a man firing shots in a school hallway,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Moments later, the Maryland co-conspirator called the department again, threatening to shoot a specific Newark High School teacher and kill students. As a result of these calls, which occurred in the middle of the school day, authorities placed the school on lockdown as police officers rushed to respond. Later the same day, Strauss and other conspirators bragged about the incident and posted images from the resulting news coverage onto their group’s social media accounts.”

Police also responded to a Purgatory threat that claimed there would be an active shooter and explosives at Albany International Airport. The group also falsely reported to the Houston County Sheriff’s Office that they were going to set fire to an Alabama trailer park and kill responding officers.

The FBI encourages people to practice good OPSEC to protect their personal information and to “stay calm, and listen to and cooperate with responding law enforcement” if they are the victim of a swatting attack.