Alleged Lizard Squad Hacker Pleads Guilty to Swatting and Stalking Female Gamers After being Rejected
A 17-year-old Canadian hacker has pleaded guilty to a total of 23 charges, including public mischief, extortion, criminal harassment and false police reports, all targeting female gamers who rejected his online friend request.
The teen, whose name has been withheld due to being a minor, victimized female gamers who rejected his requests in the online PC game, League of Legends. Allegedly the teen would knock the gamers internet connection offline with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), upload their personal information online and harass the women throughout the night with non-stop phone calls and endless “pranks.”
According to Tri-City News, the Vancouver-based teen would file false police police reports – a majority of his targets being young females – stating he either had the family hostage, was in possession of bombs or had murdered someone, spawning the SWAT team and other law enforcement agencies to burst into gamers homes unannounced with false criminal assumptions.
The trend is known as Swatting, and is often referred to as a prank, though it is no prank as police officials bust down your door storming in with the barrel of their loaded gun pointed at you. Many animals have been harmed in the process of these swatting attacks and cost taxpayers an average of $10,000 per call.
Swatting attacks have nearly become common for online streamers, as thousands of live streamers are targeted with this swatting prank, having police officials bust down the door and raid their home during a live stream.
The indicted teen often bragged on social media of his attacks, often boasting of his success and even uploading videos of him carrying out the targeted attacks.
One of the hackers most notable attacks was when he victimized a woman from Arizona, who dropped out from the University of Arizona after both she and her parents received countless threats. Following the ongoing threats, the hacker continued to call the authorities, claiming he had killed her parents with a rifle, was in possession of bombs and would shoot at any officers he saw.
After the vicious call, the SWAT team appeared at her doorstep. Less than a week later, the hacker pulled the same stunt, victimizing the woman’s mother who was down to visit. This led to the entire family being held at gunpoint due to the fictitious report.
He wasn’t done there, the teen then continued on by posting the parents credit card information online, presumably racking up fraud, then continued to spam his victims with an additional 200 text messages at one time. He even hijacked a number of his victims email and Twitter accounts, including the Arizona-woman.
Following several swatting and stalking incidents from September to December were all traced back to the teen. The hacker is already known among local Canadian authorities, as this isn’t his first run in with law enforcement considering he is currently under probation from similar crimes in the past.
It has yet to be confirmed, but the hacker is said to be affiliated with the Lizard Squad hacking crew, infamously known for knocking Sony and Xbox networks offline for several weeks in a row.
