Florida mosque ‘swatter’ linked to hundreds of terrorist threats nationwide

Authorities believe the California teen arrested for threatening a mass shooting at a Sanford-area mosque is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents across the country, creating fake emergencies to terrorize high schools, houses of worship, historically Black colleges and FBI offices.

Documents filed in Seminole County court include numerous messages attributed to Alan Winston Filion, 17, who has been extradited to Central Florida and made his first court appearance on Wednesday. Those messages contain lurid, hateful attacks on gays, Jews, Blacks and President Biden. They also acknowledge responsibility for a multitude of crimes, and express an expectation he will end up in prison for his misdeeds.

“I send police to the houses of people I don’t like for fun,” reads one, describing the tactic of swatting, so called because practitioners use threats to induce police SWAT teams to respond to concocted incidents. “I swatted someone about 29 times 20 times the cops showed up,” reads another.

In still another message in the court filing, the teen appears to claim credit for a bomb threat at an unspecified Jewish children’s hospital that led to a five-hour evacuation.