Hacker Gets 5 Years for Prank 911 Calls Resulting in SWAT Team Raids
The leader of a group of hackers who reportedly sent police SWAT teams to fictitious hostage situations in the homes of some 250 innocent people in 60 cities between 2002 and 2006 was sentenced yesterday by a federal judge in Texas to five years in prison.
Describing the pranks, in which the group used spoofing technology to place calls, seemingly, from another phone line, as a form of domestic terrorism, U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle also fined Stuart Rosoff, of Ohio, $75,000, reports the Dallas Morning News.
“Group members pretended to be inside their victims’ homes, claiming to be holding hostages and threatening to kill them. Some people were injured as police stormed the homes,” the newspaper writes.
The FBI says Rosoff also demanded phone sex from a Michigan woman and her daughter, falsely reporting her to local authorities for child abuse when she refused.
Rosoff apologized to his victims at sentencing, offering a partial explanation for the crimes: “I was somebody important on the phone.”
As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, a 19-year-old Washington state man was arrested last year and charged in a similar case involving a prank call that led to a SWAT team being dispatched to a randomly selected family’s home in Orange County, Calif.
Randal Ellis was sentenced in March in a California court to three years in state prison and $14,765 in restitution in that case, after pleading guilty to several felonies, according to the Los Angeles Times.
