Computer Hackers SWAT Homeowners
A Washington state man has been arrested for allegedly perpetrating a bizarre computer hacker attack that resulted in a SWAT team storming a home in upscale Orange County, Calif.
Authorities say Randal T. Ellis, 19, of Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into a telephone network and impersonated a resident of a randomly selected home in Lake Forest, claiming that he had committed a murder there and threatening to shoot others, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Orange County sheriff’s department responded, sending a SWAT team and surrounding the home with police, dogs and a helicopter and at one point reportedly holding the homeowners at gunpoint in their yard as their toddlers slept upstairs.
Such hacker attacks are something of a trend—authorities contend Ellis has committed at least three others, in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Washington, since 2005. And in 2006, the newspaper reports, “Deputy Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Barry Sabin told Congress that 30 to 40 such incidents had occurred nationwide.”
It took six months to track down Ellis after the March 29 incident. He was arrested on Friday in Washington and is in the process of being extradited to California, where he is charged with false imprisonment by violence and assault with an assault weapon by proxy. If convicted, he faces a possible prison sentence of as much as 18 years.
