I’m putting my quatloos on a group of gamers who think it’s funny.
As an aside, VPN’s, how are they/should they be legal? It seems quite a bit of illegal activity can be hidden behind them. If they investigate the IP addressees, and it goes to Nord VPN with their “no logs guarantee”, doesn’t that pretty much end the investigation?
Coordinated ‘swatting’ effort may be behind hundreds of school shooting hoaxes
Over the past year, more than 500 schools in the United States have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of fear that exploits the all-too-real American danger of school shootings, according to a review of media reports and dozens of public records requests. The Washington Post examined police reports, emergency call recordings, body-camera footage or call logs in connection with incidents in 24 states.
The calls are being investigated by the FBI and have generated an aggressive response by local law enforcement — particularly after officers in Uvalde, Tex., came under criticism for waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman during the May 2022 elementary school massacre.
In state after state, heavily armed officers have entered schools prepared for the worst. Students have hidden in toilets, closets, nurse’s offices.
MSN.com unpaywalled repost of Washington Post story.
So it does seem there is some evidence it could be someone overseas (in East Africa somwhere):
He identifies himself as a student at the school, although he sounds like an adult male. He also speaks with a heavy accent.
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Evans said that the calls in his state were all made directly to schools or to non-emergency dispatch lines, rather than to 911. He said they appeared to be coming from Internet-based phone numbers, which either originated in or were routed through foreign countries through a VPN connection.“There’s indications that there’s a connection to overseas,” he said. “What we don’t know is whether or not overseas could have been used as a mask.”
Conley said the possibility that the calls came from a foreign individual or entity may be bolstered by details that the caller provided that are atypical of school shootings in the U.S. For example, the particular model of gun the caller referenced as the weapon was often different from what is commonly used in school shootings.
Not totally conclusive but seems to suggest that. If it is from overseas, it doesn’t make it some big conspiracy. IMO exactly the same kind of American crank who gets a kick out of doing this. somehow gets obsessed with American school shootings (they are big news in other countries too) and decides to make these calls. When they say “tremendous level of detailed local knowledge or research.” what does that even mean nowadays? Is there really anything you couldn’t get out of a couple hours of research on Google? I mean it could be some kind of larger state or non-state organization, but really what do they get out of doing this? In terms of attacking America it barely rises above the noise of actual school shootings and threats of school shootings in the US 
One question I had, surely IRL this would be pretty easy for the authorities to work out? There are a pretty well known list of IP address for VPN providers (I know the BBC streaming website is perfectly able to filter out VPN originated IP addresses).
That would get you to the VOIP relay provider.
That wouldn’t get you one hop beyond, because US investigative agencies have zero jurisdictional leverage to demand access logs to trace the call any further.
Yeah but it would still be obvious that it was a VPN server in Ethiopia (which could be transferring someone from the US, Ethiopia or anywhere else) rather than a random non-VPN address in Ethiopia, which is likely actually a random dude in Ethiopia (assuming we are dealing with random dudes, not some state actor or someone similarly well resourced who could easily fake either situation).