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.
