California teen who made threats against hundreds of schools, including Central Valley, pleads guilty to federal charges

A California 18-year-old has pleaded to federal charges stemming from more than 375 false reports that threatened mass shootings at high schools – including several in Washington state, causing dozens of lockdowns and law enforcement responses.

One of the threats spurred a lockdown at Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley.

Alan W. Filion, 18, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty this week in U.S. District Court in Florida to four counts of interstate transmission of threats to injure after federal investigators linked him to hundreds of cases of hoax threats, known as swatting calls because of the tendency for the SWAT team to respond. One of those felony counts stems from threats made in Skagit County.

Filion was arrested earlier this year in California and was extradited to Florida. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $1 million, although first-time offenders rarely receive maximum sentences. Fillion’s sentencing has been scheduled for Feb. 11 in Orlando.

According to court records, Filion turned school threats into an online business. He targeted schools, federal agents, members of Congress and a former U.S. president between August 2022 and January.

“He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States,” court documents state.

Filion used technology that allows him to make phone calls over the internet, and he used social media to “advertise his swatting-for-a-fee services.”

Filion charged $40 for a gas leak threat that led to fire responses, $50 for a major police response to a house, and $75 for a bomb or mass shooting threat that led to a school shutdown.

“All swats will be done ASAP or present time,” Filion wrote, according to court records.

On Jan. 30, 2023, he wrote that he “used to do swattings for the power trip,” but now he did them “for money and the power trip.”

In response to the details provided by Filion, dozens of law enforcement agencies approached and sometimes entered the homes occupied by people he named with their guns drawn, detaining individuals in those homes until they could determine they were safe.

Filion bragged about those responses in online posts. He wrote that when he swats someone, he “usually get(s) the cops to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies,” he wrote on Jan. 20, 2023.

He also wrote about how easy it was to get away with cybercrimes.

“Actually in some states bomb threats to schools are counted as terrorism,” he wrote on March 18, 2023. “So I’m a terrorist.”

To avoid detection, Filion used numerous social media and email accounts, and other text-to-speech programs to mask his voice.

Washington threats

According to the court records, Filion first set his sights on Washington in the fall of 2022, when he made eight threats to bomb, shoot or commit violence at a high school in Skagit County.

“In some of these threats, the defendant falsely identified Victim-2, a 17-year-old student at the high school, as the perpetrator of some of the violent acts,” court records state.

On Oct. 10, 2022, Filion called the school claiming to be the student and threatened to arrive with a handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

“I will kill as many kids as I can and then I will shoot myself,” he said, according to court records. “I have pipe bombs that I have placed in the bathrooms, ceiling tiles, and trashcans all around the school that are set to detonate right before class starts, killing everybody and collapsing the roof.”

As a result, the school was locked down as law enforcement and a bomb squad arrived to sweep the campus, according to court records. Filion repeated the threats over the following two days.

According to news reports made from that time, it appears those threats were made at Anacortes High School.

“In this threat, and others, the defendant singled out members of the LGBTQ community as the objects of his threats based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation,” court documents state.

Filion apparently continued the threats in Anacortes in the spring of 2023.

On April 26, 2023, Filion called the local police department and identified himself by the name of a local student. He then demanded ransom and told a detective that he swatted for “fun” and for “political reasons” because he disliked the United States.

He claimed to have swatted in Chicago, Florida, Phoenix, Dallas, Salem and with the U.S. Capitol Police. He allegedly said he charged students for swatting because he was raising money to purchase weapons, bullet-proof vests and “ammonium nitrate for an attack he planned to conduct on a business location in New York.”

Then on May 10 and 11, 2023, Filion made at least 20 threatening calls to other public high schools in Washington.

On May 10, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office reported that threatening calls were made to Central Valley High School. Similar threats were made at high schools in Pullman and Davenport.

“In each call, he said that he was going to commit a mass shooting in the school and/or that he had planned bombs there,” court records state. “On several of the calls he also said that he was going to kill police officers if they responded. He ended many of the calls with the sound of automatic gun fire.”

Threats escalate

About the same time as the threats came into Spokane-area high schools, Filion also sent threats to several Historically Black Colleges across the nation, documents said.

The next month, he made swatting threats to eight federal officials or their family members and one federal building.

“One of these officials was a member of United States Congress, several others were agency heads, and others were high-ranking federal law-enforcement officers located in Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania,” the court records state.

On July 10, 2023, Filion called in a threat to a local police department in Texas. He claimed to have killed his mother and threatened to kill any law enforcement officers who arrived to investigate.

Filion gave the address of the home where he claimed to have committed the killing. It was the home of a federal law enforcement agent.

Law enforcement and firefighters responded and began to surveil the house. A neighbor told the responders that the home belonged to a law enforcement agent.

That person “was home and invited a senior police officer to come inside his residence to confirm that no homicide had taken place,” court records state.

Then later that year and into early this year, the swatting threats began to escalate.

“Some of the calls targeted religious institutions, public officials, family members of public officials and other prominent officials,” court records state. “These included numbers members of Congress and their families, multiple cabinet-level executive branch officials, multiple heads of federal law enforcement agencies, a former President of the United States, and numerous elected and appointed state officials. Many of these calls involved threats to detonate explosives at the victim’s home.”

Filion began getting help, including using one man who had a foreign accent.

FBI visit

On July 15, 2023, agents with the FBI arrived at Filion’s home in Lancaster, California, with search warrants based on online posts by Filion.

While agents searched the house, Filion and his father, who was not identified, agreed to an interview.

“The defendant falsely said that he did not know why his house was being searched and that he felt he was being targeted by envious classmates because he had graduated early from high school,” court records state.

“The agents asked the defendant about his interest in a specific town in Washington, mentioning the swatting and bomb threats made to a local high school there, and the defendant falsely replied that he did not understand what the agents were taking about and that he did not know anything about it.”

After that interview, Filion continued the online threats until he was arrested on Jan. 18 on state charges based on threats made against a religious institution in Sanford, Florida.

Federal prosecutors filed their own charges on Oct. 21, and Filion pleaded guilty earlier this week.