$500,000 Bail for Teen Hacker Who Dispatched SWAT Team

Oct. 23, 2007 — -- A teen accused of hacking a 911 police computer system and triggering the deployment of a team of heavily armed police officers to the home of an innocent and unsuspecting California family will be arraigned next month, as bail was set Monday at $500,000.

Prosecutors accused 19-year-old Randall Ellis, of Mulkiteo, Wash., of using his computer and a recorded audio track to trick Orange County police into believing he had shot and killed someone in the Lake Forest, Calif., home of Doug Bates and Stacey Cerwin-Bates and would shoot more people.

Prosecutors and police have been tight-lipped about exactly how Ellis hacked their system, but cybersecurity experts told ABCNEWS.com that such breaches are easy and indicative of police departments' lax security systems.

Moments after receiving the 911 call March 29, SWAT teams and helicopters were dispatched to the home.

Awakened by the noise and believing there was a prowler outside, Bates stepped into his yard wielding a kitchen knife only to be swarmed and handcuffed by officers carrying machine guns.

"You have to look at this from the SWAT team's perspective," said Farrah Emani, spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney. "They thought they had been called to the scene of a homicide and saw a man with a weapon; it's fortunate they did not shoot him."

Ellis has been charged with "one felony count of computer access and fraud, two felony counts of false imprisonment by violence, one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime, and two felony counts of assault with an assault weapon by proxy," according to a statement by the Orange County District Attorney.

Ellis' attorney, Ronald Bower, confirmed that the teenager would be arraigned Nov. 16. He said California took the rare step of individually collecting Ellis from the Washington state jail he has been held at since his arrest last Friday. That action, combined with the high bail, indicate how serious the California police are taking the case.

"We are going to enter a not-guilty plea in November," Bower said. "Putting in a not-guilty plea does not mean the case will go to trial, but it opens the door to things like psychological evaluation. … The bail is extremely high, and like the unique extradition, it underscores that they're very serious about this."