Hagerstown teenager pleads guilty to making swatting calls across US

A Hagerstown teenager pleaded guilty to making swatting calls to multiple police departments across the country, threatening violence against schools, a casino, and an airport.

Swatting is a form of criminal harassment, during which people falsely report an emergency to public safety to get emergency personnel to respond somewhere, despite no emergency existing.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) said that 19-year-old Owen Jarboe helped create an online group known as “Purgatory.” The group coordinated and planned swatting activities through social media, and discussed swats they conducted.

Jarboe and the others in the group often used shared scripts to obscure their phone numbers and identities.

According to his guilty plea, Jarboe and his co-conspirators placed swatting calls from December 2023 through mid-January 2024. During that time, they reportedly threatened to shoot a teacher and students at a Delaware high school; threatened to shoot people at a home in Georgia; and made bombing and shooting threats toward Albany International Airport and an Ohio casino.

Read more: DC News Now