'They're going after my family': How a bizarre obsession with the most sought-after handles on Instagram and Twitter spawned a deadly campaign of terror
Sellers go to extreme and often ingenious lengths to get their hands on coveted handles. Some have written automated scripts to monitor accounts with desirable usernames on Instagram and other platforms, and then pounce on any handles that wind up being abandoned by their users. Others have taken to scouring leaked emails and passwords from data breaches on other sites.
A new deluge began, this time to his current address. Japanese, Mexican, Chinese — seemingly every takeout option on the San Francisco Peninsula was suddenly winging its way to Eberle's home. His sister in Brooklyn, New York, was also hit with cash-on-delivery orders, along with his adult daughter at graduate school in San Diego and his in-laws in Connecticut.
She didn't understand what was going on until a week later. In the early hours of the morning, caring for her newborn, she got a call from an unknown number. On the other end of the line a stranger rasped at her, his tone artificially distorted:"I want your Instagram account." Stepping outside, he was dazzled by police floodlights. The house was surrounded by armed officers. He was being swatted.One by one, through word of mouth, Williams and Ana and other victims of the handle harassment found one another. They didn't know who was behind the assaults, and they didn't know how to stop them. But like soldiers drafted into a war beyond their making, they shared a bond. They decided to form an informal network to support one another.
To make matters worse, the Heroes found themselves facing skepticism from friends, family members, and authorities. When Ana had tried to explain to the police what was happening to her, she was laughed off the phone. When Josh Williams was swatted, an inquisitive neighbor with a police scanner posted on Facebook that there was a"suspect with a firearm" on the street who had"possibly murdered his wife.
If you don't convince your husband to give me his username, I am going to continue to harass you, your husband, and your kids. In early May, not long after the Heroes found the"extorting" lists, Hickman emailed the group with good news. Law enforcement, she told them, had made an arrest"in connection to this case." But, she cautioned,"there may still be others out there continuing to participate in this behavior."More than 400 miles north of the Bay Area, where most of the Handle Heroes lived, an Oregon woman was going through hell.
Then, in late April 2020, things turned deadly. One of Sonderman's targets, prosecutors say, was a computer programmer named Mark Herring, who owned the @Tennessee handle on Twitter. On April 27, according to court filings, one of Sonderman's coconspirators called the police and told them that Herring had murdered a woman and boobytrapped his home in the tiny Tennessee town of Bethpage with pipe bombs.
If there was any doubt about the reason for the new assault, a text that Eberle received on the second evening cleared it up."You want to give the instagram and twitter now?" the texter asked."It's not gonna stop."
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