Nelson, McCarty Hacked Ring Cameras, Swatted Residents: Feds

Two men have been charged with hacking into at least a dozen Amazon Ring cameras and streaming the aftermath.

According to authorities, Kya Christian Nelson, 21, of Racine, Wisconsin, and James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 20, of Charlotte, North Carolina, went on a "swatting spree" in November 2020.

According to a Justice Department press release from the Central District of California, the men are facing charges after being accused of swatting random homes and hacking Ring security cameras to stream the police response to social media. Between Nov. 7 and Nov. 13 of 2020, the duo is accused of hacking into homes in a number of states.

Sometimes called swatting, it involves making hoax calls to the police in order to get them to respond to certain homes. A man was mistakenly shot and killed by police after they were called to his home. A person was sentenced to 20 years in prison for swatting.

Nelson and McCarty would use the Ring cameras to share the audio and video from those devices on social media during the police response. The indictment states that they would often intimidate and threaten the responding officers. The men are said to have called the police while pretending to be a child. They reported that the child's parents were drinking and shooting guns inside the house.

The two men used online pseudonyms to carry out their hacking activities. They were able to hack the home security systems by using Yahoo accounts that were linked to the Ring cameras. It is easy to buy that kind of information on the dark web.

Nelson and McCarty were indicted by a Los Angeles federal grand jury last week and now face a felony charge of conspiracy to access computers without authorization. Nelson is accused of two counts of intentionally accessing a computer without authorization.

According to the indictment, the duo worked with a third co-conspirator. The whole thing sounds like a swatting gang in it for sick laughs because others are known and unknown.

They could face up to five years in prison if found guilty. They will face a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence if they are found guilty of identity theft. Nelson is in jail for a different case.