26-year-old targeted government officials with fake violent emergencies, feds say
A man from Romania and members of online groups he led reported violent crimes — including bomb threats and mass shootings — at government buildings, houses of worship and private homes in the United States for years, federal prosecutors said.
They were all fake.
Now, Thomasz Szabo, 26, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of threats and false information regarding explosives in a swatting scheme targeting high-profile U.S. citizens, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a June 2 news release.
McClatchy News reached out to Szabo’s attorney June 3 but did not receive an immediate response.
According to federal officials, between December 2023 and January 2024, Szabo and his groups made a “spree of swatting and bomb threats” against more than 70 individuals and four religious institutions. He also is accused of making fake threats in December 2020 and January 2021.
“Swatting attacks, that is, falsely reporting an ongoing threat of violence at a victims’ home address for the purpose of provoking a police response there, drain precious resources and can result in major injury or even death,” said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
The scheme
Szabo was involved in multiple online groups where people talked about current events and video games and engaged in what prosecutors called a culture of “trolling” or trying to get reactions from people with language intended to offend or upset others, according to court documents.
In 2018, he started making his own chat servers, and by 2020, his communications expanded to include swatting, according to court documents.
“Sometimes, following the defendant’s example, members would commit their own swatting and bomb threats and share the results with the group,” prosecutors said.
The swatting varied but mostly included threats to destroy buildings and kill or injure people, and the threats targeted individuals with large social media presences whom Szabo thought may react publicly, according to court documents.
Along with other members of his groups, Szabo would target some of the same people multiple times, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, the swatting often followed a script in which the caller confessed to an act of violence then said they had a firearm or explosives before asking for a $10,000 ransom in exchange for a hostage.
While leading the groups, Szabo engaged in some of his own swatting, including phone calls to crisis intervention hotlines with threats to commit mass shootings at multiple synagogues in New York City in 2020 and threats to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and kill the president-elect in 2021, court documents said.
In 2023, Szabo stopped committing swatting and bomb threats but continued directing his co-conspirators to do so, prosecutors said.
The swatting intensified between December 2023 and January 2024, targeting members of congress and their family, U.S. executive branch officials, law enforcement officials, members of the federal judiciary, state government officials and their family, members of the media and religious institutions, prosecutors said.
Within that time period, one of the group members messaged Szabo bragging that he did more than 25 swattings in one day, prosecutors said.
“Creating massive havoc in (America). $500,000+ in taxpayers wasted in just two days,” the group member told Szabo, according to court documents.
Szabo was extradited from Romania in November and is set to be sentenced Oct. 23, prosecutors said.
