"Bone chilling."

     These are the words Investigator Brian Sims of California's Orange County Sheriff's Department uses to describe the incident that unraveled March 29, 2007.

     On this evening, Doug and Stacey Bates went to bed with their two-year-old daughters safely asleep in a nearby room. Around 10 p.m., the wail of police sirens and rumble of helicopters overhead shook them into a terrified state of awake.

     Thinking a criminal was on the loose, Doug Bates armed himself with a butcher knife and stepped into his backyard where a swarm of police officers — believing Bates had just killed someone — greeted him with their assault rifles drawn.

     It was only after Orange County officers took Bates into custody that they learned the family had been unwitting pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a young man bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.

     "Swatting" is the name of this new and dangerous game. While on its surface it appears as nothing more than filing a false police report (a misdemeanor in most states), the above scenario shows it carries the potential for serious consequences.

     "Police never know what's on the other side of the door, and if suddenly there's an entry into the home, people may think they're defending themselves from an attacker," states Rob Douglas, a Colorado-based privacy consultant. "The potential for violence, unnecessary injury and death is huge with these calls."

Spoofing 101

     Pranksters once phoned the local pizza joint to make deliveries to unsuspecting friends. Today the "Let's send 10 pizzas to Joe's house" prank has migrated from playing innocent jokes on unsuspecting friends to terrorizing strangers by dispatching police to their homes. "In some cases they know the person. In other cases it's a random target," states Gary Allen, editor of DISPATCH Magazine On-Line for 11 years.

     Randall Ellis randomly picked the Bates family as he did with every one of the 185 fake calls he placed to dispatch centers across the country. According to Sims, Ellis used Dex-line, which provides home phone numbers, addresses and even maps to people's homes, to pinpoint his targets. In the Bates' victimization, Ellis prank called them first and swatted them after they hung up.