Blind 'Phreaker' Gets 11 Years For Hacking Phones

U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn sentenced Matthew Weigman, 19, of Massachusetts, to a total of 135 months for "swatting," a prank that gets its name by eliciting visits from the SWAT team. During the attacks, Weigman made numerous fake 911 calls, falsely reporting an emergency situation that resulted in the law enforcement agency making visits to unsuspecting victims.

Weigman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to retaliate against a witness and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud in February, after he admitted that he attempted to retaliate against a Verizon employee investigating his illegal activities.

Weigman had been "phreaking" Verizon customers for years when a Verizon investigator caught on to the schemes in April 2008 and disconnected his fraudulent Verizon account. Weigman reconnected it and then began making harassing phone calls to the investigator, obfuscating his identity on the calls through phreaking activities.

Weigman tricked Verizon into sharing the investigator's billing records while reporting false information to the phone company about the investigator in an attempt to get him fired. The retaliation schemes led to Weigman's arrest in May 2008.

Weigman, known as "hacker" and "little hacker," was considered one of the best phone hackers among phone party line groups. Born legally blind, Weigman became an expert at manipulating phone companies into divulging information, and into entering information in telecom computers and switching equipment at his behest.

Weigman's shenanigans became so widely known in the phone party line groups that he became the source of an ongoing FBI investigation. While Weigman had been organizing phone phreakers since 2003, the FBI caught wind of Weigman's ploys in 2005.

During his swatting calls, Weigman would illegally obtain personal identifying information, such as passwords and access codes, as well as telephone numbers of certain telecom employees. He would also impersonate telcom customers and employees in an attempt to set up fraudulent telephone accounts.

In 2006, Weigman spearheaded a phone phreak attack that brought the SWAT team to the home of a man in Alvarado, Texas, whose daughter, a Fort Worth resident, was a party line participant. During the prank, Weigman succeeded in making a swatting call to make it appear to emergency services that the call was made from the man's residence. Weigman's accomplices then told the dispatcher that the man had shot and killed members of his family, and that he was holding hostages, using hallucinogenic drugs and that he was armed with an AK47, according to court documents. The phone phreakers then demanded a $50,000 ransom for what they said were the remaining hostages.

Weigman also made more than 50 telephone calls to the Verizon Provisioning Center, based in Irving, Texas, to obtain services such as Caller ID blocking and call forwarding. He and his co-conspirators also used the Verizon computers to initiate new accounts and to terminate services to victims, as well as obtained credit cards and other sensitive information. Altogether, Weigman and his accomplices obtained telephone services via fraud worth in excess of $30,000.

Other schemes included wire-tapping Sprint customers to listen in on credit card transactions. Once Weigman obtained the numbers, he would charge goods and services on the victim's credit card account.