PITTSBURGH — They are fake calls to 911 with real victims and real consequences.
It is called swatting, and a Channel 11 investigation has discovered teens who play video games online are being targeted.
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For Crafton mother Nicole Sitzman and her family, their lives have been filled with bogus calls, fake suicide notes and bomb threats.
“The police came in with guns drawn,” she recalled of one incident.
The family has been a victim of swatting, a hoax call to 911 to get police, usually a SWAT team, to respond.
Although there are no statistics of how many cases there have been, Channel 11 learned the FBI has been monitoring swatting since 2008.
“Recently, we have three ongoing cases,” said Crafton Police Chief Mark Sumpter.
All involve Sitzman’s 14-year-old innocent son.
“It’s ruining not just our lives, but taking police away from their jobs,” she said.
The calls tie up emergency resources and money.
Channel 11 found cases where departments nationwide spent anywhere from $3,000 to more than $100,000 to respond to calls.
“It obviously taps our resources and any other agency we bring in to assist us in investigating this,” said Sumpter.
Sitzman said her son was playing the online game Minecraft when he blocked another gamer he did not know.
Police said the gamer retaliated by swatting him.
The family thinks the prankster got their son’s personal information by using Skype, because gamers often connect with each other through the program.
“The first one was the kid threatening to commit suicide. The kid was not at the house,” said Sumpter.
Police checked out the threat without SWAT teams and determined it was bogus.
Recently, Channel 11 got an email of another hoax involving Carlynton Junior and Senior High School.
“(It) said our son is trying to blow up the school,” said Sitzman.
That, too, was bogus.
Sitzman is hoping a suspect is caught and other families learn from their experience.
“Play close attention to what kids are playing online,” she advised.
The FBI is helping to investigate, and law enforcement has narrowed their search to someone more than 700 miles away in Missouri.