**Thomasz Szabo**, 27, was extradited from Romania in November 2024. In addition to the prison sentence, he received three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy and threats involving explosives in June 2025. ### The Swatting Campaign Szabo, operating under numerous online aliases such as "Jonah," "Plank," and "War Lord," founded and led an online community that initiated a series of bomb threats and swatting attacks starting in late 2020. According to court documents, Szabo personally made false reports to U.S. law enforcement, including a December 2020 threat to carry out a mass shooting at New York City synagogues and a threat to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and kill then President-elect **Joe Biden** in January 2021. "Members of Congress, cabinet officials, the heads of federal law enforcement agencies, churches, journalists — Thomasz Szabo and his followers targeted them all with swatting calls and fake bomb threats designed to send armed police to their doors," stated U.S. Attorney Pirro. ### Extent of the Damage Szabo advertised his activities and encouraged followers to conduct similar attacks. This led to a concentrated wave of swatting attacks targeting at least 25 members of Congress or their family members, and at least six senior executive branch officials, including multiple cabinet-level figures, between December 2023 and early January 2024. During the same period, Szabo's followers also targeted at least 13 senior federal law enforcement officials, members of the federal judiciary, at least 27 state officials, and four religious institutions. One member of the group even boasted about conducting over 25 swatting calls in a single day, claiming to have wasted more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds over two days. ### Accomplices and Future Implications **Nemanja Radovanovic**, a 23-year-old Serbian national and another of Szabo's accomplices, was also charged in August 2024 in connection with the same scheme and faces separate proceedings. "Mr. Szabo's and his co-conspirators' incessant swatting attacks created a tremendous drain on law enforcement resources and taxpayer dollars and put innocent civilians in harm's way," said **FBI** Special Agent Michael Burgwald. "Today's sentencing is an important step toward ensuring that those who believe swatting is just a prank will be disabused of that notion and making it clear that those who engage in it will face justice."  ## [99% of What Mythos Found Is Still Unpatched.](https://hubs.li/Q04crVgD0) AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming. At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what's exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop. [Claim Your Spot](https://hubs.li/Q04crVgD0)