This Is the Group That's Been Swatting US Universities

[u/i_watched_jane_die]

https://archive.is/Ig4aK

[u/kilometr]

Risking serious federal time for what like a profit of $5000!?

Would be better off trying to sneak an OLED out of Best Buy or something…

[u/Little_Noodles → u/kilometr]

I feel like that’s a recurring theme for a lot of criminal activity though. I’m routinely surprised by how small the profit is for a lot of crimes that require more labor, more risk, and less reward than just getting a job stocking shelves at Target or whatever.

[u/noixelfeR → u/Little_Noodles]

If you hung out in the other Philly subreddit, I remember a post from 1 or 2 years ago regarding exactly this point. Some criminals don’t care how little they get when compared to a life working a 9-5. They don’t want to work for someone else. They want to live fast, die young, and take a risk to make it big with fast money, fast cars, fast bitches. Funny thing is they end up working longer hours, risking prison and death and still working for someone else higher up the food chain where the penalties for screwing up in reality or perception grossly outweighs the penalties for living right and making a mistake here or there.

[u/BurnedWitch88 → u/Little_Noodles]

Being transgressive is the appeal for a certain kind of person. I had a relative like this. He would steal from people who would've happily given him the money. He'd lie about literally anything even if there was zero benefit to him and/or he was absolutely certain to be caught.

As far as I can tell, he just enjoyed being an asshole and seeing what he could get away with.

[u/Gator1523 → u/Little_Noodles]

Unskilled labor goes to the lowest bidder

[u/bigleft_oO → u/Gator1523]

unskilled labor is a myth

[u/RockerElvis → u/Little_Noodles]

No risk if they are pardoned. I hate this.

[u/Little_Noodles → u/RockerElvis]

It seems deeply unlikely that they couldn’t also be charged for serious crimes at the state level in addition to federal.

[u/Better-Grapefruit-56 → u/RockerElvis]

That's a big if. They'd better be sure that they're not expendable. Sure, today you might be pardonable but tomorrow, on some random whim, you might not be worth the time and trouble, even if that time and trouble is very low effort. The luxury to be able to delete your low-level operatives and allies is something this administration is likely to covet.

[u/NinjaLanternShark → u/kilometr]

I'm not the best at math but

including hoax threats against schools [..] for just $20

a school swatting now costing $95

around a dozen different universities have been targeted [...] the group had earned around $100,000 since the swatting spree began

Is he charging $20-$100, or over $8,000?

[u/BurnedWitch88 → u/NinjaLanternShark]

They mention other crimes as well. I'm assuming the total is the aggregate for all activities. It's not written clearly though.

[u/AbsentEmpire → u/BurnedWitch88]

The way Wired wrote that strongly implies they don't believe the claim.

Could very well be this Gores person making up a number to sound cooler.

[u/jculv → u/kilometr]

I work in fraud. It’s absolutely asinine the lengths people will go through for maybe $2000.

[u/Go_birds304]

These people are fucking evil

[u/Kushtopher_Cam → u/Go_birds304]

They’re nihilists, Donny.

[u/aceh000d18 → u/Kushtopher_Cam]

Sounds exhausting.

[u/Endlessknight17 → u/Kushtopher_Cam]

This isn't 'Nam. There are rules! 

[u/i_watched_jane_die]

The recent swatting spree began on August 21, the same day the current Purgatory Telegram channel was launched. At around 12:30 pm local time that day, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga received a call claiming an active shooter was on campus. The school was locked down for over an hour before campus police issued an all-clear at 1:51 pm after no threat was found. Hours later, at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, a hoax call forced the school into lockdown as students and faculty took part in the university’s orientation mass to welcome new students.

While students and faculty members in Tennessee and Pennsylvania ran in terror and locked themselves in classrooms, five members of the Purgatory group hosted a livestream on Discord for an audience of around 41 people.They “were streaming their successful attempts at swatting Villanova University and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, but also their attempts at swatting individual victims of the Com Network,” Marc André Argentino, an extremism researcher who is among those who have closely chronicled the evolution of The Com network, wrote in a note published on his website earlier this week.

[u/courageous_liquid]

the Com people are fucking nuts. like half their effort is trying to get members of the group to self harm or obtain CSAM. wild shit, it's like the real version of satanic panic. the one leader is like a white kid wahhabist.

[u/dotcom-jillionaire → u/courageous_liquid]

yeah i just listened to a great podcast episode about 764. really manipulative and evil shit, exploiting kids sense of wanting to belong (to an online group in this case) and then extorting them to commit violent acts, self harm, etc.

this kind of online nihilism is becoming the biggest driver of domestic terrorism and it's important to understand that these groups exist and are actively forcing members to do these terrible things.

EDIT: i would not be surprised if today's church shooting was 764/the com adjacent

[u/AbsentEmpire → u/dotcom-jillionaire]

Could you share the podcast, this is the first I'm hearing of this group

[u/dotcom-jillionaire → u/AbsentEmpire]

highly recommend this podcast overall but here's the specific episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cult-using-minecraft-to-recruit/id1740187810?i=1000719763526

unlike a lot of the topics they discuss i was also really unaware of the group. but overall it should be a wakeup call. it's easy to say your random group is aligned with the com but the idea that there are multiple anon online communities dedicated to carrying out random violence is shocking (though also may help explain some of the increase in mass shootings and vehicle attacks in recent years).

[u/AbsentEmpire → u/dotcom-jillionaire]

Thanks for sharing.

I wouldn't be shocked if some of this was being fueled by our global adversaries like Russia and China to create domestic terrorists.

[u/dotcom-jillionaire → u/AbsentEmpire]

no doubt

[u/BurnedWitch88 → u/courageous_liquid]

Is there a goal to this? Or is it just a "we love to watch the world burn" kind of a thing?

[u/i_watched_jane_die → u/BurnedWitch88]

I think there's an accelerationism component to it as well. From what I understand many/most of its members are teens and young adults. I have to imagine these are people who are deeply socially isolated and cynical about the world.

[u/dotcom-jillionaire → u/BurnedWitch88]

part of the catch is the group draws bullied or socially isolated kids in who want to feel like part of something. from what i understand, joining involves committing low key violence (killing animals, destroying property) and documenting it to send to the group as proof. some also apparently involved kids sending pictures of themselves over, etc.

afterwards, they'll keep all these this evidence as blackmail to force these low level members to do more severe acts and it escalates from there. the threat of leaking embarrassing photos or evidence of crimes is enough to push a fragile kid to do these acts as well as the desire to prove themselves or ascend the ranks of the group

[u/AbsentEmpire → u/dotcom-jillionaire]

Sounds like a terrorism recruitment operation.

[u/courageous_liquid → u/BurnedWitch88]

some mix of sociopathy and doing it for the lulz, I imagine.

these people are terminally online and just sort of radicalize eachother into this weird shit. it almost feels like a groyper adjacent, hyper-reactionary kind of thing.

[u/BurnedWitch88 → u/courageous_liquid]

You're probably right. I don't get it.

BTW: Who is downvoting these comments? lol

[u/baldude69 → u/BurnedWitch88]

Lots of weirdos subscribed to this sub. I see it all the time

[u/courageous_liquid → u/BurnedWitch88]

someone and probably more than one, down votes every single post in the Monday sticky every week

[u/BurnedWitch88 → u/courageous_liquid]

Seriously? Folks need better hobbies. 😂

[u/SwindlingAccountant → u/BurnedWitch88]

The Madison, Wisconsin School …–It Could Happen Here – Apple Podcasts

This is probably the best source for understanding these people. Mainstream media is just not equipped to report on this.

[u/RJ5R → u/[deleted]]

now that they are a for-hire criminal enterprise

does this give the feds the green light to shut down their online presences?

[u/Pineapple_Spenstar → u/courageous_liquid]

What about corn nuts?

[u/NinjaLanternShark]

claiming that he and another member named “tor” were the ones who

What kind of hacker picks "tor" as a nickname? That's deeply disappointing man. Do more than look around the room next time.

[u/technobrendo → u/NinjaLanternShark]

Fine, I'm picking TheOnionRouter as my handle then.

[u/atorthebold]

The fbi and doj under any other president would have busted these guys easily— live-streaming and wiring money?! Easy federal crimes to bust. Instead the feds spend 10000s of man hours redacting a track back to trump from the Epstein files.

[u/AbsentEmpire → u/atorthebold]

This administration is compromising every branch of justice intentionally to cover for their own innumerable crimes.

The byproduct of trying to protect Trump's financial and child sex crimes from prosection is that the agency is also now incapable of fighting domestic terrorism.

[u/ScienceWasLove]

Time to ban discord as a weapon of mass confusion.

[u/diibii0]

Where’s the military for this shit?

Or do we only trot them out when “homeless people unsightly”

[u/inherendo → u/diibii0]

The military shouldn't be the answer to this. This would also be an illegal use of them. Also this requires investigation to solve.

[u/colin_7 → u/diibii0]

What is the military supposed to do?

They need to track the people down

[u/ElectrOPurist]

Who in this exchange goes to bed happy with their choices? The cynical terrorists who carry out these false alerts? The worthless shitbags who hire them? The braindead pigs who are all too gleeful to expend a military level response for a situation that wouldn’t require it even if it were real?

[u/olsmobile]

“when asked if he is concerned about the FBI investigating the swatting spree, he said: ”Shit don’t put fear into me. Just another day in our life yk?””

Complaining to the interviewer about putting fear into his life is fucking rich coming from a professional swatter.

[u/Will-from-PA]

Death penalty.