IRL Com recruits teens for real-life stabbings, shootings, FBI warns

The FBI warns that IRL Com, a subset of the broader cybercriminal collective The Com (which includes subgroups like Scattered Spider), is escalating real-world violence by recruiting minors for swatting and violence-as-a-service, coercing members through threats and notoriety. This alert aligns with warnings from the UK NCA and Finnish police and follows arrests tied to active-shooter-threat swatting, highlighting a growing trend of youth-targeted recruitment via social media and encrypted messaging for criminal acts spanning both cyber and physical domains.