Two foreign nationals have been charged by federal prosecutors for “swatting” dozens of Congress members and some other elected officials in the U.S.
Court records that were unsealed on Wednesday show that two of the targets were a former president-election and president.
Those charged were 21-year-old Nemanja Radovanovic of Serbia and 26-year-old Thomasz Szabo of Romania. Prosecutors are alleging that they targeted about 100 people with “swatting” calls so that police officers would respond in an aggressive way to their homes.
No lawmakers, including the former president, are named in an affidavit that was prepared by a U.S. Secret Service agent.
The two defendants aren’t charged explicitly in the indictment with threatening a former president. However, one of the victims in the case is identified in it as being a “former elected official from the executive branch.” That swatting incident happened on January 9 of this year.
As the Secret Service agent wrote:
“While some of these calls targeted private citizens chosen seemingly at random, most of the calls targeted public officials, family members of public officials and other prominent individuals.”
Online court records didn’t say whether either of the defendants were arrested in the past, or whether they have legal representation. Investigators said in a court filing that accompanied the document that they believed the two defendants were in separate foreign countries as recently as last week.
In January, agents of the Secret Service interviewed Radovanovic in Serbia. He allegedly told the agents the different elements of the “script” he followed while he was making the swatting calls. The affidavit said that the defendant said he was acting under the direction of a minor who provided him with the addresses of the victims.
Both Radovanovic and Szabo are being charged with more than 24 counts of making threats as well as conspiracy. Prosecutors say that the two men carried out their plot for more than three years, starting in December of 2020 and lasting through January of this year.
A Washington, D.C., federal grand jury handed the indictment up last Thursday.
According to the indictment, Szabo set up and then moderated various chat groups so that the swatting attacks on 61 government officials and 40 private citizens could more easily be coordinated.
Some of the victims included cabinet-level members of the executive brand, a federal judge, former and current governors, other state-level officials and one head of a federal law enforcement agency.
Three days before President Joe Biden was inaugurated in January of 2021, Szabo threatened during a call to the crisis intervention hotline to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol building, while also killing Biden, who was president-elect at the time.
In a statement, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, said:
“Swatting is not a victimless prank. It endangers real people, wastes precious police resources and inflicts significant emotional trauma.”
