Part of the nebulous Com network, GPAHE has identified a group claiming responsibility for a flurry of false shooter reports that have terrified communities and students, and resulted in armed police responses.
On orientation day at Philadelphia’s Villanova University, families and new students gathered on campus to prepare for the coming academic year. On August 21, around 4:30PM, a group of these students were mustering outside for an opening Mass at the private Catholic university.
The Mass was expected to be followed by a family picnic, but at 4:35PM the university issued an urgent alert.
“ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus,” the campus website warned. “Move to secure location. Lock/barricade doors. More info to follow.”
Videos and pictures shared on social media show waves of students and parents panicking, running to get inside and find cover.
Within minutes, law enforcement had swarmed the Villanova campus. People purporting to be on site posted images of furniture stacked to barricade themselves inside rooms or taking shelter in a utility closet.
Image posted during the active shooter lockdown at Villanova University showing a barricaded door. (Source: X)
Another alert at 4:53PM told people to “Stay Clear of Law School Scarpa Hall.”
News coverage began to trickle in but offered few updates, only images of heavily armed officers sweeping the campus. Live streamers who reported hearing about one gunshot victim over police radio walked back the claim as police said no one was injured.
At 6PM, more than an hour since the first alert, the school, thankfully, gave the all clear. There was no shooter, no evidence of a firearm, no students or family members hurt.
“We have discovered through a lot of hard work that this was a cruel hoax,” University President Peter Donohue told the gathered crowd.
While terrifying for all involved, it was not the only false call to be made to a university that day.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was placed under a lockdown hours earlier at 1PM, after a call reporting an active shooter resulted in a police response. No threat was found.
Law enforcement is investigating, but online, one group gleefully claimed responsibility for the hoaxes, as well as another earlier incident at Doane University in Crete, Nebraska, on August 19.
Anatomy of a Hoax
The same night of the Villanova hoax, a male using the name “Gores” posted in an online chat of the group calling themselves Purgatory, inviting others to join a voice call on a chat application popular among video gamers, Discord. There, he made repeated calls falsely reporting active shooters to police and university security offices, attempting to recreate his alleged Villanova “success” at sowing frightening chaos on campuses earlier in the day, while claiming to already be under house arrest.
He used a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service to communicate, an application that allows users to make phone calls online. These types of applications help conceal the caller’s location and identity from law enforcement.
“Can you hear me?” Gores asked a woman who answered the phone at the Bucknell University security office in Pennsylvania. “I’m currently at Bucknell University. I’m in the library right now. I just saw a guy walking around, six foot tall, and it looks like he’s holding an AR-15.”
He adds, “I think he’s heading towards me.”
The woman promises to send police. The others listening in on the call snicker and laugh.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), which was at the time searching for the Villanova hoax perpetrators, heard the call and contacted the Bucknell University security office immediately to inform the university it was a hoax.
Gores was not done for the night. Over the span of the next few hours, he repeatedly attempted to provoke an armed police response at various locations in Michigan. Sometimes he included the sound of a shotgun blast in the background to emphasize the “danger.” These police departments realised the calls were false.
Gores in the Purgatory chat on August 21, 2025, discussing the news coverage of the hoax active shooter call he claims to have made. (Source: Telegram)
Purgatory’s most recent public Telegram channel was created on August 21, 2025, the same day as the lockdowns in Tennessee and Pennsylvania. But another group had already used the name Purgatory. Formed in 2023, and much like the current iteration, the original Purgatory targeted schools, airports, and residential communities with false swatting reports to the police about active shooters, bomb threats, or other types of violence.
The purpose of these false reports, dubbed “swatting,” is to provoke an armed response from law enforcement. A dangerous and pernicious action, the result of a successful swatting call can terrify and traumatize victims, damage property, and waste police resources. In some cases these calls can have fatal consequences for targets.
On July 21, 2025, Evan Strauss of Moneta, Virginia, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, cyberstalking, interstate threatening communications, and threats to damage or destroy by means of fire and explosives, for his role in the swatting as the creator of the original Purgatory. Police identified him and several co-conspirators as orchestrating hoaxes in multiple states, including threatening to burn down a residential trailer park in Alabama, carry out a mass shooting at a New York airport, and reporting a fake school shooting in Delaware.
While it is not clear if there are direct connections between the original Purgatory and the new group, the first posts to the new Telegram channel include a link to a press release about Strauss’ guilty plea.
But Why?
Purgatory is unfortunately not unique.
It’s part of a decentralized network of threat actors operating online, often referred to as “The Com,” a twisted community that lives at the intersection of extremism, cybercrime, child abuse, and violence.
Beginning primarily as an interlinked grouping of chat rooms and accounts on Discord, young people shared images of criminal acts including assaults, computer hacks, fraud, vandalism, and arson. A social dynamic quickly developed within the subculture that rewards those who are able to document and share proof of their various criminal exploits.
Similar to other online movements, there is no single online forum or digital meeting space, and participants intermingle on numerous scattered chat servers across different applications and platforms.
Initially made up of very small groups of people, some chatrooms and channels now have thousands of participants. While some branches of The Com focus on financial crime, some collect and create gore content (often involving animals), while others use a variety of tactics to extort children into self-harm and the creation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Some of the groups will go as far as to offer violence and swatting against specific targets for a fee. Dubbed “violence-as-a-service” or “swatting-as-a-service,” Purgatory has already attempted to monetize the attention brought by the August 21 hoax calls.
A list of swatting services and prices offered by Purgatory. Source: Telegram.
Purgatory’s success and attention preceded the revival of another swatting group from within The Com. A group previously using the antisemitic name “Goyswats” began posting to a channel on August 20, 2025, under a new title that references rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs—who was recently found guilty for charges related to prostitution. The group’s Telegram channel has included is own price list of services specifically for making hoax shooting calls against schools, hospitals, and government buildings.
The “success” of one Com group can often inspire others seeking to gain a similar level of notoriety or even as a challenge to potential rivals. Some swattings, like the recent targetting of universities, are likely meant to draw attention and increase a group or individual’s reputation. In other cases, the hoax calls are meant to provoke an armed police response against a particular target.
Some groups go as far as to offer “violence-as-a-service,” where perpetrators can pay to target rivals with smashed windows, arson, and assaults.
Youth Culture Run Amok
The Com often seeks out young people as potential victims, sometimes infiltrating online communities dedicated to self-harm or eating disorders to find and isolate potential targets. Further complicating matters, the perpetrators themselves are often young.
Many Com groups will also use the symbols and language of extremist movements, including Jihadi and neo-Nazi movements. This includes imitating the aesthetic of violent militant accelerationist groups like the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division and Tempel ov Blood.
Often Com chatrooms are steeped in internet irony and racist language and jokes.
Some Com groups require frequent evidence of new acts of violence, property destruction, and extortion as a requirement of membership. This can rise to the level of plotting to commit mass casualty attacks, as evidenced by The Com group Maniac Murder Cult (MKY).
Initially founded in Ukraine but recruiting internationally, in July 2024, the US Attorney’s Office released an indictment against Moldovan national Michail Chkhikvishvili, allegedly MKY’s leader. Charged with soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence in New York City, Chkhikvishvili is alleged to have participated in planning with an undercover law enforcement member to commit a mass casualty attack in New York City by distributing poisoned candy to racial minority children and at Jewish schools while dressed as Santa Claus.
While there is undoubtedly an ideological element to some of the groups, what is unique to this subculture is the emphasis on social standing within The Com. The more media attention a group or individual receives, the more destructive the action, or the more harm inflicted on a victim, the more notoriety is rewarded.
Diffuse and decentralized, The Com often defies traditional understanding of extremism movements. However, this is an extremely dangerous subculture whose participants seek to deliberately cause significant harm to anyone unlucky enough to become a target—including other people within The Com.
In May 2025, the FBI reported that it had opened over 250 cases related to The Com extortion groups at every single one of its 55 field offices.
Purgatory continues in its attempts to provoke a police response, having targeted multiple other American universities since Villanova on August 21, 2025. Four days later, August 25, and after numerous failed swatting attempts, the group boasted about causing active shooter lockdowns at the University of Colorado Boulder and Kansas State University.
