Overview

• The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Bureau is using digital forensics to identify the person responsible for a false 911 report of an armed suspect at the Castaic desert paintball event.
• Deputies arrived in tactical formation with guns drawn, handcuffed DDG during his livestream and later released him without charges after confirming no weapon was present.
• Clips of DDG’s detention spread across TikTok, Instagram and X, fueling the trending hashtag “FREE DDG” and unverified speculation about links to his recent public controversies.
• Swatting has surged nationwide, costing emergency services around $100,000 per response and driving lawmakers to propose new federal and state penalties to deter hoax calls.
• Despite recent federal convictions for swatting crimes, including a four-year sentence for 375 fake calls, no arrests have been made in DDG’s case as detectives continue their investigation.