Racine man pleads guilty to 'swatting' scheme over Ring doorbell cameras

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 21: A seal for the Department of Justice is seen on a podium ahead of a news conference with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice Building on March 21, 2024 in Washington, DC. During the news confe
LOS ANGELES - A Racine man pleaded guilty on Thursday, Jan. 23 to taking part in a one-week nationwide "swatting" spree, officials with the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Nationwide swatting scheme
What we know:
Investigators say Kya Nelson, 23, gained access to Ring doorbell cameras, placed bogus emergency phone calls designed to elicit an armed police response, and then livestreamed the events on social media -- sometimes while taunting responding police officers.
Nelson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.
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Nelson, who is doing time in a Kentucky state prison after being convicted in an unrelated case, has been in federal custody since August 2024.
Timeline:
According to his plea agreement, from November 7, 2020, to November 13, 2020, Nelson and co-conspirators gained access to home security door cameras sold by Ring LLC, a Santa Monica-based home security technology company. Nelson acquired without authorization the username and password information for Yahoo! email accounts belonging to victims throughout the United States.
A news release says the conspirators then determined whether the owner of each compromised Yahoo! account also had a Ring account using the same email address and password that could control associated internet-connected Ring doorbell camera devices. Using that information, they identified and gathered additional information about their victims.
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Then, the conspirators placed false emergency reports or telephone calls to local law enforcement in the areas where the victims lived. These reports or calls were
intended to elicit an emergency police response to the victim’s residence. The conspirators then accessed without authorization the victims’ Ring devices and transmitted the audio and video from those devices on social media during the police response. They also taunted responding police officers and victims through the Ring devices during several of the incidents.
What's next:
Nelson is scheduled for sentencing on May 1. He will face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count.
The Source: The information in this post was provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.