Mastermind behind bogus Vinita School bomb threat pleads guilty to federal charges
PHOENIX, Ariz. — A man accused of operating a “swatting scheme” that allowed for the creation of hundreds of bogus emergency phone calls including a fake bomb threat to Vinita High School has pleaded guilty to federal charges.
James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 21, of Charlotte, N.C. pleaded guilty to four of 27 federal charges he is facing in Arizona and California.
Two of the guilty pleas involve reporting fake school shootings in Vinita and Westfield, Ind. The remaining two pleas involved using the identification of another person in relation to a felony violation.
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McCarty also referred to as “Aspertaine” in legal documents lived in Kayenta, Arizona at the time of the crime.
In January 2021, McCarty called the Vinita School District saying he “was at the high school and about to shoot with guns” and “would shoot at propane bottles,” according to a federal indictment.
The call caused the school to immediately go into lockdown and prompted a huge response from police, state troopers, and firefighters from Craig, Ottawa, and Delaware counties, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. McCarty is also accused of assuming the identity of a Vinita student during the telephone hoax, the court document states. The telephone calls originated from Kayenta, Arizona and were made to schools and police stations in Oklahoma, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, and Ohio.
Sentencing is set for April 15.
Authorities say Kya Christian Nelson, of Racine, Wisconsin and McCarty were part of the scheme where the two men gained access to home security door cameras sold by Ring, LLC, a home security technology company by using compromised Yahoo email accounts.
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Nelson was not charged in connection to the Vinita threat, but faces federal charges in California. Click here to read the California news release. He is currently serving a seven-year sentence on Wisconsin state charges according to published reports.
Part of the scheme included calling in false emergency reports or telephone calls to local law enforcement by fraudulently accessing Ring devices and transmitting the audio and video from those devices on social media during the police response.
The California indictment alleges other similar Ring-related swatting incidents occurred in Flat Rock, Michigan; Redding and Oxford, California; Billings, Montana; Decatur, Georgia; Chesapeake, Virginia; Rosenberg, and Katy Texas; Darien, Illinois; Huntsville, Alabama; and North Port, Florida.
What is Swatting?
Swatting is a term used to describe a hoax call made to emergency services, typically reporting an immediate threat to human life, to draw a response from law enforcement and the S.W.A.T. team to a specific location. Confusion on the part of homeowners or responding officers has resulted in health-related or violent consequences and pulls limited resources away from valid emergencies.
Offenders often use spoofing technology to anonymize their own phone numbers to make it appear to first responders as if the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone number.
