Weigman used his skills to target "employers, landlords, families and friends of multiple party line participants," often in the hope that they would be fired or evicted from their homes, the DoJ said. Sometimes he and his group would cut phone lines, or listen in on victims' conversations.

Weigman and his crew used a variety of tricks to hack the phone system. They would trick phone company workers with "pretexting" calls, where they pretended to be employees or customers in order to obtain information; they would try war-dialing -- using a computer to dial thousands of phone numbers in hopes of gaining access to a system; and they would also trade passwords and information with other telephone hackers, known as "phreakers."

Last year, three other swatters -- Stuart Rosoff, Jason Trowbridge and Chad Ward -- were to five years in prison each. Martinez .

Benton received an 18-month sentence on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Weigman, of Revere, Massachusetts, was sentenced to 135 months. Another codefendant in the case, Carlton Nalley, has pled guilty, but didn't show up for sentencing.

Last year, another swatter named Randall Ellis was sentenced to three years in prison for dispatching a SWAT team to an unsuspecting Orange County family. Authorities say Ellis made about 200 such calls.