Most people had never heard of swatting until recently. It’s gone from a prank to a right-wing political dirty trick to a way for a teenage creep to make some money. And that is why Alan Filion is malaka of the week.

At age 17, Alan Filion is the youngest person to ever wear the malakatude crown of shame. He was the obvious choice this week:

A California teenager believed to be behind dozens of so-called swatting calls across the country was extradited to Florida on Tuesday after being charged last month in connection with a false report of a mass shooting at a mosque last year, the authorities said.

 

The teenager, Alan Winston Filion, 17, of Lancaster, Calif., was arrested on Jan. 18 in California and charged as an adult on four felony charges, including falsely reporting an act of terrorism with a bomb or weapon of mass destruction, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said in a statement. Mr. Filion arrived in Seminole County on Tuesday and was being held without bond at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, the sheriff’s office said.

Filion is no teenage whiz kid or genius hacker, he’s an asshole with a variety of DEVICES:

While on the phone with the police, Mr. Filion then played audio of gunfire in the background, which prompted more than 30 law enforcement officers to respond to the mosque, according to the affidavit. Once there, the officers saw that there was no gunman and that everyone at the mosque was safe, the sheriff’s office said.

 

F.B.I. agents served a search warrant at Mr. Filion’s home in California on July 15, 2023, and obtained a number of “devices.” Social media activity and other information gathered from those devices, which agents didn’t specifically identify, led the authorities to believe that Mr. Filion could have been behind dozens of swatting calls across the country that targeted a government building, a Jewish children’s hospital, several schools, several historically Black colleges and universities, and his own home, according to the arrest affidavit.

Filion is not only a malaka, he’s an asshole for hire charging $75 per call using his online handle of Torswats. He’s not smart enough to use a less suspicious screen name or to charge more for his illicit services.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Mr Filion advertised his swatting services on the “Torswats” channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

 

The Telegram channel charged $40 for a “EMS/Fire/gas leak” callout,  $50 for a “major police response” and $75 for a “bomb threat/mass shooting threat”, according to investigators.

 

“All swats will be done ASAP or present time”, the channel claimed, and offered returning customers a discount, according to the court documents.

Aa you can see, Filion is no master criminal, he did, however, try to cover his tracks in an awkward pimply teenage boy kinda way:

The perpetrator appeared to use a “text to speech” programme to disguise their voice, and caller ID spoofing to hide their location.

 

He was eventually tracked down to his home in California after investigators pieced together a digital trail of Lord of the Rings -related usernames on YouTube and Discord, according to charging documents.

Holy eye of Sauron, Batman. This swatting shit seems hobbit forming. I’ve having a hard time Tolkien this all in…

Enough with the puns.

Someone could have been seriously hurt by Filion’s antics, but the overall story is so goofy that ridicule and sarcasm are in order. Menacing mosques is some serious shit.

There are two aspects to Filion’s story that caught my attention. First, he bears a passing resemblance to semi-famous dumbass Chumlee  of Pawn Stars fame. How about some Separated At Birth action, mugshot style?

DUUUDE. Who swatted the schoolhouse?

Second, Filion is from Lancaster, CA, which is where Frank Zappa went to high school. That’s where the similarities end. Zappa was a musical genius with a sardonic and ribald sense of humor. Alan Filion is just another schmuck who spent too much time on the internet and landed in jail. And that is why Alan Filion is malaka of the week.

The last word goes to Frank Zappa with “a song about this place I used to live where they used to raise turkeys.”

Since I mentioned DEVICES earlier, here’s some Zappa lagniappe with a song whose intro stresses DEVICES: