A Romanian national who led an online swatting ring that targeted more than 75 public officials, multiple journalists, and four religious institutions was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison.
Swatting is a dangerous criminal harassment tactic involving making false reports to emergency responders of an ongoing violent threat at a target’s address to provoke an armed police response.
27-year-old Thomasz Szabo, who was extradited from Romania in November 2024, was also ordered three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of threats involving explosives in June 2025.
Szabo, who operated online under multiple aliases (including “Jonah,” “Jonah Goldberg,” “Plank,” “Rambler,” “War Lord,” “Shovel,” “Cypher,” “Kollectivist,” “Mortenberg Shekelstorms,” and “NotThuggin2”) founded and led an online community that began a pattern of bomb threats and swatting attacks in late 2020.
According to court documents, Szabo personally made false reports to U.S. law enforcement, including a December 2020 threat to carry out a mass shooting at New York City synagogues and a threat to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and kill President-elect Joe Biden in January 2021.
“Members of Congress, cabinet officials, the heads of federal law enforcement agencies, churches, journalists — Thomasz Szabo and his followers targeted them all with swatting calls and fake bomb threats designed to send armed police to their doors,” said U.S. Attorney Pirro on Wednesday. “Szabo was extradited from Romania to face justice in an American courtroom, and today he has reaped the consequences of his actions.”
Szabo also advertised his activities to followers and encouraged them to carry out similar attacks, which prompted a concentrated spree of swatting attacks targeting at least 25 members of Congress or their family members, and at least six senior executive branch officials, including multiple cabinet-level figures, between December 2023 and early January 2024.
Within the same timeframe, Szabo’s followers also targeted at least 13 senior federal law enforcement officials, members of the federal judiciary, at least 27 state officials, and four religious institutions.
One of the group’s members even boasted to Szabo about conducting more than 25 swatting calls in a single day, claiming to have wasted more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds over two days.
23-year-old Serbian national Nemanja Radovanovic, another one of Szabo’s accomplices, was also charged in August 2024 in connection with the same scheme and faces separate proceedings.
“Mr. Szabo’s and his co-conspirators’ incessant swatting attacks created a tremendous drain on law enforcement resources and taxpayer dollars and put innocent civilians in harm’s way,” added FBI Special Agent Michael Burgwald. “Today’s sentencing is an important step toward ensuring that those who believe swatting is just a prank will be disabused of that notion and making it clear that those who engage in it will face justice.”
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