"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.
The sentence and the defendant
Federal courts sentenced 27-year-old Thomasz Szabo to four years in prison and 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 was extradited from Romania in November 2024 to face the charges, the court record shows.
The scheme, aliases, and timeline
Szabo founded and led an online community that began a pattern of bomb threats and swatting attacks in late 2020. He operated under multiple aliases including "Jonah," "Jonah Goldberg," "Plank," "Rambler," "War Lord," "Shovel," "Cypher," "Kollectivist," "Mortenberg Shekelstorms," and "NotThuggin2," according to court documents.
- The activity stretched across several years, with early incidents in December 2020 and a concentrated spree between December 2023 and early January 2024.
- The group targeted more than 75 public officials, multiple journalists, and four religious institutions, per the charging record.
Specific threats, targets, and impact
Prosecutors say 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 January 2021 threat to detonate explosives at the U.S. Capitol and kill President-elect Joe Biden. Between December 2023 and early January 2024, the group's activities prompted at least 25 swatting incidents involving members of Congress or their family members and at least six targeting senior executive branch officials, including multiple cabinet-level figures.
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 member of the group boasted to Szabo about conducting more than 25 swatting calls in a single day and claimed to have wasted more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds over two days.
Swatting — "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" — places bystanders and responding officers at risk and consumes public safety resources.
Legal aftermath and co-defendant proceedings
Szabo entered his guilty pleas in June 2025 and was sentenced after extradition from Romania in November 2024. Authorities described the sentence as part of a broader effort to hold such actors accountable. "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," said 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."
Another alleged co-conspirator, 23-year-old Serbian national Nemanja Radovanovic, was charged in August 2024 in connection with the same scheme and faces separate proceedings.
What this means for members of Congress, federal law enforcement, and religious institutions
- Members of Congress and senior executive branch officials: The large number of targeted calls — at least 25 members of Congress or family members and multiple cabinet-level figures — underscores the potential for recurring, coordinated harassment campaigns to disrupt officials' personal security and schedules.
- Federal law enforcement and taxpayers: The group's own bragging about operational tempo and claimed waste — more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds over two days — highlights the resource drain and financial cost swatting imposes on response agencies and communities.
- Religious institutions and journalists: The inclusion of four religious institutions and multiple journalists among targets signals the tactic's use not only against public officials but also against civic and community actors who can be pulled into sustained campaigns of intimidation.
Szabo's sentence closes one chapter: a convicted leader of a multi-year campaign of bomb threats and swatting over a period that courts and prosecutors laid out in detail. With at least one alleged accomplice still facing charges in separate proceedings, prosecutors framed the outcome as a warning that coordinated, high-volume harassment will result in federal consequences. The evidence in the filings — aliases, specific threats to synagogues and the U.S. Capitol, quantified counts of targeted officials, and the claimed financial toll — leaves little doubt about the scale prosecutors attributed to the operation.
Read the original story: Romanian leader of online swatting ring gets 4 years in prison
