Wisconsin man sentenced 44 months for nationwide swatting spree

Kya Christian Nelson, a 23-year-old from Wisconsin, was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison for orchestrating a week-long nationwide 'swatting' spree in November 2020 that involved hacking into Ring home security cameras. Nelson and his co-conspirators used stolen Yahoo! email credentials to access Ring accounts of victims across multiple states, then placed false emergency calls to police, prompting armed responses to unsuspecting residents’ homes. Once police arrived, the group livestreamed the responses via the compromised Ring cameras and, in some cases, taunted both officers and victims through the devices. The victims were chosen based on matching login credentials, and the scheme affected people in California, Michigan, Montana, Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and Alabama. Prosecutors emphasized the real danger posed to innocent victims and police, describing the spree as a digital crime wave that terrorized people across the country. Nelson's federal sentence will run concurrently with a separate sentence he is already serving in Kentucky for unrelated offenses.