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WASHINGTON — <\/span>A Romanian man was sentenced on Wednesday to four years in prison for organizing a wave of swatting calls<\/a> and bomb threats against dozens of U.S. government targets, including members of Congress, cabinet-level officials, federal judges and the heads of federal law-enforcement agencies, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n Thomasz Szabo, 27, was a prolific participant in a dangerous form of online harassment that has become an increasingly common occupational hazard for public officials across the American political spectrum<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of nearly five years for Szabo, who pleaded guilty last June to conspiracy and threats charges. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., also sentenced him to three years of supervised release after his four-year prison term, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.<\/p>\n \u201cThis administration will not tolerate attacks on the institutions and individuals who serve this country,\u201d Pirro said in a statement.<\/p>\n In 2018, from Romania, Szabo began creating chat servers for him and like-minded users to engage in internet trolling. By late 2020, he had expanded his online activities to include swatting, which involves making hoax threats to provoke emergency police responses at targets’ homes. Others joined him in making the bogus threats.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite (or because of) the fact that they resulted in far greater harm to the victim and society, these activities offered much more entertainment value to the defendant and his followers, since swatting and bomb threats often resulted in an observable real-world impact,\u201d prosecutors wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n