There’s spamming, there’s fishing … and now there’s “swatting.” Swatting is considered a new type of telephone fraud that can be quite dangerous.
The perpetrator deceives 9-1-1 systems into thinking a crime is in progress – one so serious that it requires SWAT teams to respond to homes where nothing is happening. It not only results in a waste of time for police, but an intimidating situation for clueless homeowners.
In one instance, a teenager manipulated a system to trick 9-1-1 operators into believing a murder had taken place. A SWAT team showed up and woke members of an innocent family who were subsequently handcuffed and forced to the ground. The victims were chosen at random.