California teen who threatened hundreds of schools, including Central Valley, pleads guilty to federal charges

An 18-year-old California teenager has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to more than 375 false reports of a mass shooting threat at high schools, including several in Washington state, prompting dozens of lockdowns and law enforcement responses.

One of the threats caused a lockdown at Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley.

18-year-old Alan V. Fillion, of Lancaster, California, pleaded guilty this week in U.S. District Court in Florida to four counts of interstate transmission of threats to cause bodily harm after federal investigators linked him to hundreds of instances of false threats, known as calls, because special forces response trends. One of those felony counts is related to threats in Skagit County.

Filion was arrested earlier this year in California and extradited to Florida. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine, although first-time offenders rarely receive the maximum terms. Fillion’s sentencing is scheduled for February 11 in Orlando.

According to court documents, Filion turned threats against the school into an online business. It targeted schools, federal agents, members of Congress and a former US president from August 2022 to January.

“He targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals throughout the United States,” court documents said.

Filion used technology that allows him to make phone calls over the Internet, and he used social media to “promote his paid services.”

Fillion charged $40 for a gas leak threat that led to a fire, $50 for a mass police response to a home and $75 for an explosion or mass shooting that led to a school lockdown.

According to court records, “all special operations will be conducted as soon as possible or now,” Fillion wrote.

On January 30, 2023, he wrote that he “used to hit for the power trip” but now he did it “for the money and the power trip.”

In response to details provided by Fillion, dozens of law enforcement agencies approached and sometimes entered homes occupied by people he named with guns drawn, detaining people in those homes until they could determine they were safe.

Fillion bragged about those answers in online posts. He wrote that when he hits someone, he “usually has the police drag the victim and their families out of the house, handcuff them, and search the house for the dead,” he wrote on January 20, 2023.

He also wrote about how easy it was to avoid cybercrime.

“In fact, in some states, threats to bomb schools are considered terrorism,” he wrote on March 18, 2023. “So I’m a terrorist.”

To avoid detection, Filion used multiple social media and email accounts, as well as other speech synthesis programs, to disguise his voice.

Washington’s threats

According to court records, Filion first targeted Washington in the fall of 2022, when he made eight threats to bomb, shoot or commit violence at a high school in Skagit County.

“In some of these threats, the defendant falsely identified Victim-2, a 17-year-old high school student, as the perpetrator of some of the violent acts,” court records state.

On October 10, 2022, Filion called the school, posing as a student, and threatened to arrive with a handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

“I’m going to kill as many kids as I can and then I’m going to shoot myself,” he said, according to court records. “I have pipe bombs that I have placed in the bathrooms, the ceiling, and trash cans all over the school that are supposed to explode right before class starts, killing everyone and collapsing the roof.”

As a result, the school was placed on lockdown as law enforcement and bomb squads arrived to clear the campus, according to court records. But Filion repeated the threats over the next two days.

According to news reports at the time, it turns out that those threats were made at Anacortes High School.

“In this and other threats, the defendant singled out members of the LGBTQ community as targets of his threats based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation,” court documents state.

Filion apparently continued his threats in Anacortes in the spring of 2023.

On April 26, 2023, Filion called the local police department and identified himself as a local student. He then demanded a ransom and told the detective he struck for “fun” and for “political reasons” because he didn’t like the United States.

He claimed to have worked in Chicago, Florida, Phoenix, Dallas, Salem and the US Capitol Police. He allegedly said he was charging the students with beatings because he was raising money to buy guns, body armor and “ammonium nitrate for an attack he planned to carry out on a place of business in New York.”

Then on May 10 and 11, 2023, Fillion made at least 20 threatening calls to other Washington public high schools.

May 10, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office reported that Central Valley High School had received threatening calls. Similar threats have been made at high schools in Pullman and Davenport.

“In each call, he said he was going to commit a mass shooting at the school and/or was planning to bomb it,” court records state. “He also said on several calls that he was going to kill the police if they responded. He ended many calls with the sounds of automatic gunfire.”

The threats are intensifying

Around the same time the threats came to Spokane-area high schools, Fillion also sent threats to several historically black colleges across the country, the documents said.

The following month, he threatened eight federal officials or their family members and one federal building.

“One of these officials was a member of the United States Congress, several others were agency heads, and others were high-ranking federal law enforcement officials located in Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania,” court records state.

On July 10, 2023, Filion made threats to a local police department in Texas. He claimed to have killed his mother and threatened to kill any law enforcement officers who came to investigate.

Filion gave the address of the house where he claimed to have committed the murder. It was the home of a federal law enforcement agent.

Law enforcement officers and firefighters responded and began to search the home. The neighbor told operatives that the house belongs to a law enforcement officer.

That person “was at home and invited a high-ranking police officer to come into his home to confirm that there was no murder,” court records state.

Later that year and early this year, the shooting threats began to increase.

“Some of the calls were directed at religious institutions, public officials, family members of public officials and other prominent officials,” court records state. “These included members of Congress and their families, numerous executive branch cabinet officials, numerous federal law enforcement officials, a former president of the United States, and numerous elected and appointed government officials. Many of these calls included threats to detonate explosives at the victim’s home.”

Filion began to receive help, particularly from a man with a foreign accent.

FBI visit

On July 15, 2023, FBI agents arrived at Fillion’s home in Lancaster, California, with search warrants based on Filion’s Internet postings.

While agents searched the home, Filion and his father, who has not been identified, agreed to be interviewed.

“The defendant falsely stated that he did not know why his home was being searched and felt that he was the target of jealous classmates because he graduated from high school early,” court records state.

“The agents asked the defendant about his interest in a certain city in Washington, mentioning the vandalism and bomb threats at a local high school, and the defendant falsely replied that he did not understand what the agents were talking about and that he did. I don’t know anything about it.”

After that interview, Filion continued to make online threats until he was arrested on January 18 on state charges based on threats against a religious institution in Sanford, Florida.

Federal prosecutors filed their own charges on Oct. 21, and Fillion pleaded guilty earlier this week.