LOS ANGELES (CN) - A 23-year-old man from Wisconsin was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison for his part in a week-long "swatting spree," in which he and his collaborators made bogus 911 calls and recorded through hacked door security cameras as armed police descended on unsuspecting residents.

Kya Christian Nelson, of Racine, Wisconsin, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles where he had been charged with conspiracy and unauthorized access to protected computers.

Per his plea agreement, Nelson's federal sentence will return concurrently with a seven-year sentence he's already serving in Kentucky where he pleaded guilty in 2022 to making a bogus emergency call of a school shooting that sent law enforcement to a high school and, a day later, calling in a fake bomb threat.

"Swatting is extraordinarily dangerous," prosecutors with U.S. attorney's office in LA said in asking for a four-year sentence. "When called to a house during one of these incidents, police arrive believing that violent crimes have been committed at the home and that people are still in danger. As such, they generally approach with guns drawn, believing that they may need to use force."

The unexpected arrival of a "SWAT" team at their door are terrifying and have long lasting effects on some victims, the prosecutors argued.

In November 2020, Nelson and his collaborators matched stolen Yahoo! email usernames and passwords to the Ring doorbell accounts of people who used the same login for both. They made bogus emergency calls to cause an armed police response to these victims' homes and accessed their Ring security cameras to transmit the police response on social media.

One hoax telephone call was placed to the West Covina Police Department in Southern California, purporting to be from a minor child reporting her parents drinking and shooting guns inside the residence.

The caller claimed that her parents had multiple firearms and had fired approximately seven gunshots inside the house. Based on this hoax call, West Covina Police Department officers made an emergency response to the house and cleared the residents from the home at gunpoint.

During the police response, according to the government, Nelson accessed the Ring doorbell camera located at the West Covina residence and used it to verbally threaten and taunt the police officers who responded to the reported incident.

Swatting has become a widespread prank that, besides ordinary victims, has targeted celebrities, activists and even a federal judge overseeing cases related to the Jan. 6, 2020 storming of the U.S. Capitol. In some instances, the victims were actually shot by police responding to the bogus calls.

Nelson's federal public defender Aimee Carlisle described his bleak childhood that led to drug addiction and the poor choices he made.

"Mr. Nelson suffered tremendous hardships as a child," the attorney said. "His mother, battling her own demons and additions, abandoned him. He lived in homes, on streets, and at campsites where few resources were available but fleas were plentiful. He grew up in such derelict circumstances that he was eventually placed in foster care. He rotated in and out of foster care for years. He has a seventh-grade education because no adult took the responsibility of ensuring that a young Kya continued going to school."

"However," Carlisle said, "Mr. Nelson has grown tremendously in the years he has been in jail and prison since his actions in this case. He has learned firsthand the consequences of his actions and deeply regrets making poor choices."

One of Nelson's collaborators, 22-year-old James Thomas McCarty, was sentenced in 2024 to seven years in federal prison by a federal judge in Arizona.

McCarty admitted he had illegally accessed a victim's Ring camera in Florida and made a call to the North Port Florida Police Department, in which he claimed to be the victim's husband who had just killed her, was holding a hostage and had rigged explosives at the residence.

McCarty then live-streamed the law enforcement response and posted a message on social media taking credit for the swatting incident and stating that he thought it was amusing.

Source: Courthouse News Service