Wisconsin man sentenced for “swatting” spree using hacked Ring cameras

A Wisconsin man has been sentenced to 44 months in federal prison for orchestrating a nationwide “swatting” spree in which he and his co-conspirators hacked into Ring home security cameras, placed false emergency calls, and livestreamed armed police responses while taunting victims and officers.

Kya Christian Nelson, 23, was sentenced in California after pleading guilty in January to one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California.

Nelson, from Racine, Wisconsin, has been in federal custody since August 2024 and was previously serving time in Kentucky on unrelated state charges.

Prosecutors said that between November 7 and 13, 2020, Nelson and his accomplices illegally accessed Yahoo! email accounts and used the stolen credentials to breach linked Ring doorbell cameras. They then identified victims across the country and placed false emergency calls intended to trigger armed police responses at those individuals’ homes.

Once police arrived, Nelson used the compromised Ring cameras to monitor and livestream the events and, in some cases, verbally harass both officers and residents.

In one case on November 8, 2020, Nelson and a co-conspirator targeted a family in West Covina, California. They placed a hoax call to the police department posing as a child reporting that her parents had fired multiple gunshots in the home. Police responded with force, clearing the residents at gunpoint, while Nelson accessed their Ring camera to verbally threaten the officers.

A similar incident occurred in Oxnard, California, on November 11. Nelson accessed a victim’s Ring account and placed two false emergency calls to police, claiming a child was being threatened by a gun-wielding parent and that shots had been fired. Police again responded in force, and Nelson used the Ring device to taunt them.

“[Nelson] and his co-conspirators went on a digital crime spree, terrorizing innocent people around the country from behind their keyboards,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “While [Nelson] was safe behind his keyboard, he subjected others to real danger.”

Another participant in the scheme, James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 22, of Kayenta, Arizona, was sentenced in June 2024 to seven years in federal prison for his role in the swatting conspiracy and on unrelated charges filed in Arizona.

McCarty admitted to accessing a Florida victim’s Ring camera and calling police to falsely claim he had killed his wife, was holding a hostage, and had placed explosives at the home. He later livestreamed the police response and posted on social media that he found the incident amusing.

The FBI investigated the case.