Man accused of ‘swatting’ arrested in Charlotte, facing federal charges

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - A man is facing federal charges for making hoax calls to police departments and schools across the country.

20-year-old James Thomas Andrew McCarty was arrested in Charlotte on Wednesday.

He is facing nine counts of making a false statement, nine counts of false information and hoax, one count of stalking, and six counts of aggravated identity theft.

McCarty made several fake violent threats to police and schools between January and June of 2021.

This is called “swatting” and it’s a growing problem for law enforcement and the communities they serve.

“When these calls come in, generally they’re reporting a large magnitude incident, there’s going to be a lot of resources that will respond to that,” WBTV security analyst Karl de la Guerra said.

De la Guerra said swatting is taxing on law enforcement and dangerous for everyone.

“It’s an absolute crime,” he said. “It should not happen.”

But it is happening across the country and in our area. School districts across South Carolina got fake calls about active shooters in October.

Earlier this month, several Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools got hoax calls about people on campus with gunshot wounds.

According to CMS, those calls came from someone in Georgia.

McCarty is federal charges for making calls out of Arizona to police departments and schools in Georgia, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Indiana and Ohio.

In one instance, he told police in New Jersey that he killed one person, hurt another, and would blow up a house.

In another call, he told a school in Indiana that he was a student and that he was about to start shooting with guns, including shooting at propane bottles.

He also called police in Ohio claiming he had four bombs outside of a retail store.

“Imagine the number of man hours that were wasted and the calls that didn’t get answered within those communities in a timely manner, when law enforcement were responding to these,” De la Guerra said.

De la Guerra said statistically, swatting is on the rise.

“I don’t know why this is occurring now,” he said. “All it takes is the imagination of a criminal and a phone. Those two things have been around for a long, long time. Why swatting is becoming a popular thing, I think that’s a question that will need to be answered.”

De la Guerra said he hopes anyone who is found guilty of swatting is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

McCarty is due in federal court here in Charlotte next week.

Related: Security analyst, forensic psychiatrist weigh in on threats happening in area school districts

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