Foreign national pleads guilty in connection to 'swatting' incidents

Ryan Tarinelli, CQ-Roll Call on Jun 2, 2025

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WASHINGTON — A Romanian citizen who authorities say was the leader of a conspiracy that targeted members of Congress and others with “swatting” incidents pleaded guilty Monday, the Justice Department announced.

The department reported that Thomasz Szabo, who was extradited from Romania in November, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of conspiracy and one count of threats involving explosives.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement Szabo “led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation’s security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas.”

“This case reflects our continued focus on protecting the American people and working with international partners to stop these threats at their source,” Bondi said.

Swatting incidents are when an individual makes a fake report regarding an alarming situation for the purpose of prompting a law enforcement response to a location.

The Justice Department, citing court documents, said Szabo was the leader of an online community that “engaged in a pattern of bomb threats and ‘swatting,’” beginning in late 2020.

An indictment filed last year accused Szabo of calling a crisis intervention hotline in December 2020 and conveying “threats to commit a mass shooting at multiple unspecified synagogues in New York City.”

Then in January 2021, Szabo made a call to a crisis intervention hotline and conveyed “threats to detonate explosives at the United States Capitol and kill the President-elect,” according to the indictment.

In December 2023 and January 2024, subordinate members of Szabo’s group carried out a spree of swatting and bomb threats that victimized at least 25 members of Congress or their family members, according to a Justice Department press release.

The spree victims also included members of the federal judiciary, along with former or then-current senior executive branch officials and then-current or former senior federal law enforcement officials, according to the department.

“During that time period, one of those subordinates bragged to Szabo: ‘I did 25+ swattings today,’ and ‘creating massive havoc in (A)merica. $500,000+ in taxpayers wasted in just two days,’” according to the press release.

Around that time, Capitol Police officials said the recent surge in swatting incidents posed “a new challenge” in their mission to protect lawmakers.

Szabo’s sentencing is scheduled for October, according to the department.

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