Canadian teen who harassed female League of Legend players jailed
"This is not how I raised him to be…"
As a Finnish court failed to jail a teen hacker convicted of 50,700 charges related to computer crime, a 17-year-old who terrorised female League of Legends players has been given 16 months by a Canadian court.
Earlier this year a court heard how the teen, who is linked to hacker group Lizard Squad, would contact girls via League of Legends or Twitter, then set to work harassing them if they declined his friend requests. He blamed his actions on boredom.
A frequent tactic of his was to phone a victim's local police force and state that he was holding the girl's family hostage, or that he had killed someone in the house.
He would also post personal contact information online and repeatedly call victims late at night.
Victims ranged in location from B.C. to states across the US, including Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Ohio and California.
One woman, a student at University of Arizona in Tucson, was forced to drop out of her course due to the teen's continued harassment. Armed police were called to her house twice within the same week, and family members were removed from the home at gunpoint.
The teen's exploits ended after an eight-hour livestream of himself swatting multiple people, during which viewers reported him to the police. You can see a snippet of the livestream in the video, below. Warning, it's NSFW.
The teen pleaded guilty to 23 charges, including extortion, harassment and public mischief. The incidents were aimed at two dozen, mostly female, League of Legends players. He also admitted being behind a bomb hoax that resulted in Disneyland shutting down Space Mountain temporarily in 2014.
The teen, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, was sentenced to a 16-month custodial sentence, but given he's already served eight months, now faces eight months behind bars, followed by another eight months supervised in the community. He's also banned from using the internet during his sentence.
Outside the court yesterday, the teen's mother said she hoped her son would return to society a healthier person, CBC News reported.
"I just want him to be like, you know, the one that's happy and wants to go out and do things and not become this. This is not how I raised him to be. To take revenge out on women."
