After a meagre wager of $1,50 (R18,50) was set during a game of Call of Duty, an online spat between two players on the same team escalated over Twitter to threats of swatting.

The person who was the target of the swatting then gave the other gamer a false address, which sent police to a nearby home instead of his own.

It’s a common trend in the gaming community and a popular form of online harassment that, you guessed it, “involves calling in a fake hostage situation, bomb threat, or shooting to authorities who then deploy a SWAT team to the home of an unsuspecting victim,” reports Rolling Stone.

Nasty, nasty.

And, for the first time in the history of swatting, it ended in death:

28-year-old Andrew Finch, a family man from Kansas, opened his door to a fully-armed SWAT team ready to defuse a hostage situation that was called in from 13,000 miles away.

Shot down before he could even leave his porch, it became clear that Finch was the victim of a sick and tragic prank.

But then, an act of karma:

Moronically, some successful swatters turn to social media to brag, leading the police to Tyler R. Barris [below] in Los Angeles, who’d been linked to two dozen previous phony [sic] bomb threats.

In light of Finch’s death, and a string of other high-profile swatting schemes including a New York Times Magazine report on the rise of serial swatters, criminal consequences are expected to reach beyond the standard reimbursement of municipal funds.

Tyler R. Barris, the man behind the phone call that led to Finch’s unnecessary death, is being extradited from his home in Los Angeles to await trial in Kansas, and it has been reported that manslaughter and reckless endangerment may be on the table.

But gamers aren’t the only perpetrators and victims. During 2012, a rash of celebrity swatting occurred and included raids at the homes of Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Miley Cyrus:

Over the next year, armed forces were called to various “incidents” at celebrity homes all over Los Angeles. Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Selena Gomez and the Jenner family have all been victims of what was at the time being called “the 9-1-1 hoax.” In these incidents, the thrill comes from the media-coverage, eventually prompting The Los Angeles Times to forgo further reporting them for fear of copy cat hoaxes.

Since then, public figures such as congresswoman Katherine Clarke of Massachusetts and the viral meme stars behind “Damn Daniel” have also gone public with their frightening experience of having been swatted.

What a time to be alive.

At least if you call the police here in SA, you have some time to reconsider your decision before they arrive at the intended target.

[source:rollingstone]