Law enforcement officers were called to billionaire currency speculator George Soros’ Long Island home on Saturday by a 911 caller claiming he had just shot his wife, Southampton Police told reporters on Monday.
However, the report was bogus – the latest incident of “swatting” to befall a high-profile individual amid an uptick in such incidents around the holidays this year.
An officer responding to the scene at Soros’ Old Town Road estate claimed he had “spoken to security [and] searched the premises. It was [a] negative problem,” a recording of police radio traffic obtained by the New York Post revealed.
It is not known if Soros or any of his family members, who were photographed vacationing in Barbados last week, were home at the time of the prank call.
Several US lawmakers were swatted on Christmas, including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose home was visited by police after a man called 911 claiming to have shot his girlfriend there and threatened suicide. Three Republican state senators and one Democrat were reportedly targeted by similar pranks that day.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was also visited by police on Christmas in response to a bogus report to the city’s 311 information system, claiming a man had tied up and shot his wife inside the home.
Police and emergency services only realized it was the mayor’s house upon arrival there. Wu recently made headlines for hosting and then defending the existence of a no-whites-allowed holiday party for Massachusetts elected officials.
On Thursday, Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones was swatted at his home and had a bomb threat called into his office that turned out to be fake. Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott had cops sent to his house on Wednesday night from a call claiming a man had shot his wife there with an AR-15 three times for cheating on him.
In what may have been the first incident of “meta-swatting,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley was visited by police on Friday in response to a phony 911 call to Fairfax County police regarding a shooting. Just a day earlier, he had denounced the practice of swatting in an interview with Fox News Digital, calling it “a crime that flourishes because there is insufficient deterrent.”