Whiteboy7thst—real name Alexander Wachs–is a popular, Illinois-based YouTube and Twitch vlogger who broadcasts himself playing computer games to legions of fans online. Yesterday, while playing the zombie survival game Day Z, Wachs fell victim to a "Swatting" prank: An anonymous miscreant placed a false tip, most likely a bomb threat, and gave local police Wachs' address.
Swatting has a long and annoying history, and a popular Twitch user being swatted isn't, unfortunately, anything out of the ordinary. What happened when police arrived at Wach's house is.
The video above shows Wachs playing Day Z until he has to suddenly log out and rush away from his computer. Next we see a police officer and a police dog seemingly searching Wach's residence. And that's it—Whiteboy7thst never returned to his stream. So what happened?
Later yesterday, a tipster sent the news site Veridite an inmate summary from the Will County, IL police department:
According to the summary, Wachs was charged with felony cannabis possession—between 30 and 500 grams. It seems that in the process of searching Wachs' residence for a bomb, Will County police found his stash of pot. Per Veridite, he has hearing set for 1:30 pm today.
So add Wachs' woes to the already extensive list of reasons why its a bad idea to send police to someone's house under false pretences—you may get them in real, not funny, trouble.