SEATTLE – U.S. authorities on Thursday said they arrested a Washington state man who made more than 20 “swatting” calls to agencies in Ohio and 10 other states as well as one Canadian province, prompting real emergency responses to his fake reports of bombs, shootings or other threats.
Ashton Connor Garcia, 20, of Bremerton, used voice-over-internet technology to conceal his identity as he placed the calls last year and he treated them as entertainment, broadcasting them on the social media platform Discord, federal prosecutors said.
He faces 10 felony counts filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington, that could bring up to a decade in prison. Court records did not immediately indicate if Garcia had an attorney who might speak on his behalf.
Garcia allegedly called in fake bomb scares to the Fox News station in Cleveland, on July 28 and for a flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles on Aug. 23. In another instance, he is accused of threating to bomb an airport in Los Angeles unless he received $200,000 in Bitcoin.
Garcia’s arrest came as a spate of threats and false reports of shooters have been pouring into schools and colleges across the country, unnerving officials, parents and students who are already on edge about actual school shootings, including at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, this week.