A grand jury indicted two people in a swatting scheme in which the defendants are accused of hacking into Ring video doorbells, calling the cops by placing bogus emergency calls, and then live streaming the police response on social media. The pair are accused of doing this about a dozen times in a single week.
The emergency calls were placed in hopes of getting armed police, like a swat team, to respond to a home where nothing is happening and everyone inside is caught completely off guard. During several of the incidents the defendants also verbally threatened and taunted responding officers.
21-year-old Kya Christian Nelson, a.k.a, ChumLul, is charged with one count of conspiracy to intentionally access computers without authorization, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and two counts of intentionally accessing without authorization a computer. Nelson faces the possibility of 14 years in prison. James Thomas Andrew McCarty, a.k.a Aspertaine, is charged with one count of conspiracy to intentionally access computers without authorization and faces five years in federal prison.
According to the indictment, the defendants stole victims’ Yahoo email accounts then determined if their Ring doorbell had the same name and password and hacked it. Nelson and McCarty are accused of pulling these stunts in states across the country, including California, Montana, Georgia and Texas.
The FBI urges everyone to have different passwords for their devices and use two-factor authentication.
