Leftist billionaire George Soros has become the latest victim in a string of high-profile swattings.
Swatting is the act of calling in a fake police report, usually about a violent crime, to a person's home or business — prompting a heavy police response.
Southampton Police were called to Soros' New York estate just before 9 p.m. on Saturday. The caller claimed that he had just shot his wife and was threatening to shoot himself.
“Spoke to security, searched the premises. It was [a] negative problem,” an officer responding to the scene reported, according to a recording of police radio traffic obtained by The New York Post.
It is unclear if the 93-year-old or his relatives were home during the incident.
There have been a large number of swattings over the last two weeks.
George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley's Virginia home was swatted on Friday.
“Yes, I was swatted this evening,” Turley said in a statement. “It is regrettably a manifestation of our age or rage.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was swatted on Christmas. Republican Georgia State Sens. John Albers, Kay Kirkpatrick and Clint Dixon, Democrat Kim Jackson, and New York GOP Rep. Brandon Williams were reportedly also swatted on the holiday.
"On Thursday, Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was also swatted, with a bogus bomb threat called into police — one day after US Rep. Rick Scott (R-Fla) was the target of another call that sent police rushing to his Naples home," the Post reports. "Among the other recent swatting victims were Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, and US Rep. Kevin Miller, an Ohio Republican."
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was also swatted after she removed former President Donald Trump from the state's primary ballot.
In 2017, a fake police report was called to the home of a man named Andrew Finch in Wichita, Kansas. The swatter had claimed that he had shot his father to death and was holding the rest of his family hostage.
Finch was unarmed and on his porch when he was shot by a police officer who believed that he was reaching for a gun.
The false report had been called in by serial swatter Tyler Barriss, who pleaded guilty to 51 charges of swatting in 2019 — including one count of making a false report resulting in a death.
Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019 under a plea agreement.
“We hope that this will send a strong message about swatting, which is a juvenile and senseless practice," U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said during a news conference following Barriss' sentencing. "We’d like to put an end to it within the gaming community and any other context. Swatting, as I’ve said before, is not a prank."
