Under 18 U.S.C. 1038, the penalties for knowingly conveying false information about a bomb, shooting, terrorist attack, or similar hoax run from a fine and up to five years in prison for a basic offense, up to twenty years if someone suffers serious bodily injury, and up to life imprisonment if anyone dies as a result. A conviction also carries mandatory restitution for emergency response costs, and the same conduct can trigger a separate civil lawsuit from the agencies that responded.
The Three Prison Tiers
The statute sorts punishment by the harm the hoax causes, not by how elaborate the lie was.
- No serious injury: a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.
- Serious bodily injury results: a fine, up to twenty years in prison, or both.
- Death results: a fine, imprisonment for any number of years up to life, or both.
The middle tier catches people off guard. A fake bomb threat that causes a stampede during an evacuation, or a swatting call that ends in a confrontation where someone is seriously hurt, can push exposure from five years to twenty. Judges weigh the scale of the disruption, the defendant’s criminal history, and whether the defendant showed any awareness that people could be harmed.
A parallel provision, subsection (a)(2), covers false statements about the death, injury, capture, or disappearance of a U.S. service member during a war or armed conflict. The penalty ladder is the same: up to five years, up to twenty if serious bodily injury results, and up to life if someone dies.
Mandatory Restitution for Response Costs
Prison and fines are not the end of it. On a conviction, the court “shall order” the defendant to reimburse any state or local government, and any private nonprofit fire or rescue organization, for the expenses it incurred responding to or investigating the hoax. The word is mandatory, not discretionary.
When more than one defendant is convicted for the same hoax, each is jointly and severally liable for the full amount, so the government can collect the entire reimbursement from any one of them. The order is enforced like a civil judgment, which means it survives the sentence and can follow a defendant for years after release.
These numbers get large fast. A single hoax that triggers a SWAT deployment, bomb squad response, hazardous materials unit, building evacuation, and road closures can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in response costs, all of which the defendant owes.
Civil Liability on Top of the Criminal Case
Subsection (b) creates a separate civil cause of action. Any party that spent money responding to or investigating the hoax can sue the person who conveyed the false information and recover those costs. State agencies, local police departments, fire departments, and private organizations that provided emergency response can each bring their own suit.
The civil action does not depend on a criminal conviction. It uses the ordinary civil standard, preponderance of the evidence, rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A defendant acquitted of the criminal charge can still lose a civil suit for the same conduct, and the two proceedings can run in parallel.
What Conduct Triggers the Statute
The law reaches anyone who intentionally conveys false or misleading information under circumstances where the information could reasonably be believed, and where the described conduct would violate one of a list of serious federal offenses if it were real. The false report does not have to name a specific crime. It just has to describe conduct that fits within the covered categories.
Those categories include aircraft destruction or sabotage, biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear and radiological threats, explosive materials, firearms offenses, destruction of vessels, and terrorism, along with violations of the Atomic Energy Act, aircraft piracy and aviation security offenses under Title 49, and destruction of interstate pipeline facilities. In practice, almost any false report of a bombing, mass shooting, hijacking, or weapon of mass destruction falls within the statute.
Swatting is the most visible modern application. A fake 911 call reporting a shooting, hostage situation, or bomb at a target’s home lands squarely inside the covered offenses, and federal agencies, particularly the FBI working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, have made these cases a priority.
What Prosecutors Must Prove
Three elements have to be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
The defendant acted with intent to convey false or misleading information. Someone who genuinely believed a threat was real and reported it in good faith does not satisfy this element, even if the report turned out to be wrong. Intent is usually shown through the defendant’s own communications, prior statements, social media activity, or the surrounding circumstances, such as an anonymous threat made right after a personal dispute with the target.
The information was conveyed under circumstances where it could reasonably be believed. Obvious satire may not clear this bar, but the threshold is not high. The statute does not require that anyone actually believed the statement, only that the circumstances made belief reasonable.
The false information described conduct that would violate one of the listed federal offenses if true. A phoned-in bomb threat meets this element. A fabricated report of a minor local violation does not.
Defenses That Can Reduce or Defeat Liability
The strongest defense is lack of intent. Because the statute punishes deliberate deception rather than honest mistakes, evidence that the defendant believed the threat was real, was relaying information from a trusted source, or had a history of reporting genuine safety concerns can defeat the case.
A second line challenges the “reasonably be believed” element. If the statement was clearly hyperbolic, made in an obvious fictional or comedic context, or too vague for any reasonable person to treat as a genuine threat report, that element fails. Defense attorneys sometimes call expert witnesses on how law enforcement triages incoming reports to show that the statement at issue would not have been taken seriously.
A third defense argues that the described conduct does not actually match any of the listed federal offenses. The list is broad, so this defense is narrow, but it can matter when the fabricated report describes a state-level crime with no federal analog on the statute’s list.