Tyler Barriss aka SWAuTistic caused almost 100 SWATing attacks by calling the police on perceived online enemies and claiming that they were holding hostages and were heavily armed. One of these SWATs, launched in Wichita, Kansas last year, led to the death of Andrew Finch, a father of two.
Now Barriss is facing up to 20 years in prison after Barriss pleaded guilty “to making hoax bomb threats in phone calls to the headquarters of the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C.”
“He also made bomb threat and swatting calls from Los Angeles to emergency numbers in Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New York, Michigan, Florida and Canada,” wrote security researcher Brian Krebs.
U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren said he would give Barriss a 20-year sentence if he apologized to the Finch family. This may be a difficult proposition considering Barriss accessed the internet in April from jail, writing “I am an eGod” and threatening to SWAT again.
Barriss is be sentenced January 20, 2019.
The instigators of the the deadly SWAT, two young men named Casey Viner from Ohio and Shane Gaskill from Wichita, are also facing charges after a Call of Duty argument led Gaskill to dare Barriss and Viner to SWAT his old address where Finch then lived.
Image via Kansas.com