Purgatory, tied to online community The Com, claims responsibility for swatting attacks on US universities, airports, and more, charging $20 to $95 per incident
known as swatting—for just $20...threats against hospitals, businesses...airports can cost up to $50 www.wired.com/story/purgat... @gate15.bsky.social Waldo Jaquith / @waldo.net : China is in our telecom systems and able to monitor our phone calls and text messages in real-time, but the feds can't stop two people who are being paid to shut down universities via swatting? Were all those people RIFed? Nire Bryce / @nirebryce.breadthcharge.net : it's interesting that they're all focusing on this and not the neo-nazi terror teen extortion grooming gang that folks are saying the shooter seems connected to based on the paraphernalia — (wired recently dug into another affiliated group) — www.wired.com/story/purgat... David Gilbert / @davidgilbert : More university swatting calls yesterday, despite the fact WIRED revealed the identity of the group behind these hoax calls earlier this week. — The FBI has declined to comment, and the group told me they saw the whole thing as a “joke.” — www.wired.com/story/purgat... Forums: Slashdot : ‘Swatting’ Hits a Dozen US Universities. The FBI is Investigating
Context & Ripple Effects
Swatting has long moved beyond online-game disputes into a public-safety risk, with a fatal Wichita case demonstrating the consequences of a false emergency report. The FBI subsequently created a coordination database for swatting incidents, making this a test of whether cross-agency response can keep pace with repeat offenders.
Purgatory’s reported connection to The Com follows earlier coverage of The Com members’ involvement in extortion groups. Its claimed low per-incident pricing matters because it presents disruptive emergency calls as a purchasable service rather than solely an individual prank.
First-order effects
- The FBI’s investigation now focuses attention on Purgatory and its alleged role in calls targeting universities, airports, hospitals, and businesses.
- Targeted institutions and emergency responders face immediate operational disruption from threats that must be assessed as potentially real, even when the callers characterize them as jokes.
Second-order effects
- The reported $20-to-$95 pricing lowers the barrier to commissioning disruptive calls, increasing pressure on law enforcement coordination systems such as the FBI’s swatting-response database.
- The Com’s association with Purgatory may draw greater scrutiny to adjacent communities already linked in coverage to extortion activity, rather than treating swatting as an isolated behavior.
Third-order effects
- If low-cost swatting services persist, the problem shifts from sporadic harassment toward a scalable abuse market in which emergency-response capacity is the scarce resource.
- The durable policy and security challenge will be improving attribution and trusted handling of emergency reports without creating delays that endanger legitimate callers.
The trend: Swatting is increasingly becoming an organized, low-cost online service abuse that converts digital communities’ reach into real-world emergency-response costs.