A cyber group known as Purgatory is reportedly behind an alarming spate of AI-enhanced swatting calls that have generated active shooter alerts and the resulting fear and chaos on college campuses in recent weeks.
Between August 21 and 25, at least ten universities were disrupted with fake active shooter calls that resulted in lockdowns and costly, large-scale law enforcement responses while spreading panic among students.
The group uses AI tools to replicate gunfire and screams while on the phone with local authorities, according to recent findings by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Center for Internet Security (CIS), which last month pinned the practice on the Purgatory group.
Wired interviewed the self-proclaimed co-leader of Purgatory, known online as “Gores.” He told the publication that the group offers a menu of services, including hoax threats against schools, for a payment of just $20, but swatting hospitals, businesses, and airports can cost up to $50.
Purgatory operates on the Telegram and Discord platforms. It is reportedly part of a larger group known as “The Com,” described in one report as “a loose cybercriminal network that engages in swatting, sextortion and the distribution of child sex abuse material.”
The FBI issued a bulletin in July about The Com, short for The Community, calling it a “rising threat to youth online.”
John Cohen, an executive at CIS and a former Department of Homeland Security official, told the New York Post:
Sometimes (the calls) are for a fee, other times it’s to bring attention to themselves as a group so that they can get new clients or get others to join this affiliation and help them do swatting. Sometimes, quite frankly, it’s because they enjoy the thrill of watching.
Cohen also said swatting can be a tool of foreign militaries and terrorist organizations to “sow discord” and undermine U.S. institutions. They typically hire groups like Purgatory to do the dirty work.
Purgatory’s Gores claimed to Wired he has made $100,000 since the shooting spree began, though the figure could easily be an exaggeration when doing the math in light of the group’s affordable swatting rates.
Fake calls began on August 21 at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga and Villanova University. Fake calls hit the University of South Carolina and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 24, according to the Post’s coverage.
Six swatting calls were reportedly placed on August 25, hitting Iowa State, Kansas State, the University of Maine, and the University of Arkansas.
Matt Mills, the assistant chief at the University of Arkansas Police Department, described to the Post how the campus was thrown into chaos after the fake report of a shooting in its Mullins Library with “a guy with a gun in the room.”
“A call went on for a couple of minutes toward the end of the call,” he said. “Our dispatcher could hear gunfire in the background.”
The calls didn’t stop there, and it later became unclear which ones were panicked students and staff and which ones were fake.
“Over the next couple of hours, we received over 300 calls on our non-emergency lines and 38, 911 calls from varying parties,” the assistant chief said. “Those calls ranged anywhere from, they thought they saw the suspect, they thought they heard gunshots.”
Seven campus buildings were cleared and 15 different agencies deployed before authorities figured out they had been swatted, he said.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me why somebody would pay to have this done to a campus, to a hospital, to be anywhere,” Mills told the Post. “That just doesn’t compute in my brain.”
In May, a federal grand jury indicted three young men for swatting “multiple police and emergency departments across the United States” as part of Purgatory. They face five to ten years in prison for each count if convicted.
The threat of justice apparently is not going to deter leader Gores.
“Shit don’t put fear into me,” he told Wired. “Just another day in our life yk?”
When asked if the swatting spree would continue, he replied, “Yes. Two months.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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