This morning a Sydney teenager was arrested over a supposed hostage drama which is now being reported as an alleged swatting attack — a false report to police in the hope they’d respond in force. Which they did.
As The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Police descended on the Arncliffe home just after 4.40am on Wednesday after emergency services received a report that the 18-year-old had tied up his father and a friend and was planning to shoot them because they had sexually assaulted his mother…
The teenager surrendered to police without incident.
The teenager’s mother claimed that his laptop was hacked and that he had told her he was the victim of “swatting”.
Sydney’s Radio 2UE picked up the story this afternoon, with Ian ‘Dicko” Dickson and Sarah Morice speaking first to their police reporter Michelle Taverniti, then me, then a 97-year-old caller recalling a different meaning of “swatting”.
Taverniti said that the teenager told his mother that he’d been visiting Hack Forums to trade Bitcoin. But as I said on-air, that’s what the lad told his mother told the police told the police reporter. We shall see.
“Three laptop computers and a smart phone were found at the house and these will be forensically examined by police,” says the NSW Police media release, so I daresay we’ll find out more in a couple of days.
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This audio is ©2014 Radio 2UE Sydney Pty Ltd.
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