5-year term given in ‘swatting’ case

MEMPHIS — A Tennessee man was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in an international “swatting” scheme that led to a person’s death, The Commercial Appeal reported.

Authorities said Shane Sonderman, of Lauderdale County, worked with others, including a minor in Great Britain, to try to force people to hand over control of desirable social media usernames through harassment, including swatting. Swatting is an illegal practice of falsely reporting life-threatening emergencies at a person’s home, causing heavily armed police, and sometimes SWAT teams, to rush to the scene.

In this case, Sonderman, 20, provided contact information to a co-conspirator about Mark Herring, of Sumner County, who controlled the Twitter handle Tennessee, according to court documents.

On April 27, 2020, that co-conspirator called Sumner County police to say “that he had shot a female in the back of a head and she was dead, and that he would use pipe bombs placed at the front and back doors if police responded,” according to a statement signed by federal prosecutors. The address the caller gave was Herring’s home.

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