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Teen hacker admits swatting female gamers who turned him down

The teenager, 17, whose name is not being released because he is a minor, targeted female gamers that refused his advances and turned down friend requests on the game League of Legends, TechTimes reports.

What is swatting?

According to the Urban Dictionary, swatting is described as a prank played out on the Internet. A hacker finds your address, which they can do either through your IP or because your name and location is known. The hacker then calls 911 anonymously and reports a fake emergency, Digital Journal reports.

In this case, the young hacker uploaded personal information of some of his victims while simultaneously shutting down their Internet and calling them repeatedly.

Last Friday, in a sentencing hearing that lasted a day at Port Coquitlam provincial court, Crown prosecutor Michael Bauer described how the teen had terrorized gamers who were mostly young and female, along with their parents in B.C., Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Ohio, and California, Tri-City News reports.

He often called police and would tell them he was holding a family hostage, had killed someone in the house or had napalm bombs. He sometimes demanded a ransom and ordered a Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) to show up with a police helicopter. Sometimes he said he would kill any law enforcement official who intervened, Bauer said.

It also wasn’t unusual for the teen, who used the same social media name or a variation of it, to retaliate by posting the birth dates of a victim’s parents, along with their social insurance and credit card numbers on the Internet. Then he’d order pizza and have it delivered to their homes.

In one really extreme instance, a woman in Arizona withdrew from the University of Arizona after the hacker allegedly threatened the woman and her parents. The hacker also called Tucson police, claiming he had shot his parents with an AR15 rifle, had bombs and said he would kill police officers on sight, The Business Insider India reports.

That brought a SWAT team to raid the woman’s home. Then the teen pulled the same prank five days later while the woman’s mother was visiting and did it another time, at her parents’ house, causing her father and brother to be dragged outside the house at gunpoint.

The harassment didn’t stop there. He sent her 218 simultaneous text messages, hacked her email and Twitter accounts, and posted her parents credit-card information online.

The harassment reached a crescendo when he posted an eight-hour live stream on YouTube which showed his swatting and harassing a young woman in Ohio. He used the names “obnoxious” and “internetjesusob” and people watching the stream called police.

He was finally caught after a string of swatting incidents from September through December were identified as being from the same source, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office reported, per the Business Insider.

The teenager was already on probation for similar crimes in Canada and was well-known to law enforcement. He was reportedly a member of the hacker group Lizard Squad, which gained notoriety after knocking both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network offline last year.

Shortly after the teen hacker was arrested the police uncovered a series of false reports he had sent out, including a bomb threat to Disneyland in 2013.

Earlier this month, Judge Patricia Janzen ordered a second psychiatric assessment of the hacker, who has been charged with a total of 40 crimes. He was then remanded for 169 days.

During the proceeding, the teen showed little emotion except for the occasional smirk. He was wearing a sweatsuit, but no shoes, and his ankles were shackled, Tri-City News reports.

His parents and brother also attended the proceeding to hear the crucial facts from the Crown, which has asked the judge to impose no contact orders on three victims. Two of the victims are from B.C.

A sentencing hearing will continue on June 29.

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