SWAT the heck? Hoaxes irk the stars

13 March 2015 - 02:30 By ©The Daily Telegraph
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At 12.40pm on Wednesday, Miami Beach police were called to the home of US rapper Lil Wayne, following reports that four people had been shot on the premises.

When the SWAT team arrived, they discovered an empty property and no sign of any disturbance.

And it soon emerged that Lil Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter jnr, was the latest in a long line of celebrity "swatting" victims.

"Swatting" is an elaborate hoax that involves calling the emergency services and alerting them to a fake critical situation in order to cause as much disruption to the victim as possible.

A number of high-profile celebrities, including Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood, have been targeted. In 2012, a caller claimed that someone was waving a gun outside Justin Bieber's Los Angeles home.

Lil Wayne's representative, Chris Chambers, said the rapper was in the recording studio when police descended on his property.

Both Lil Wayne, who in 2010 served eight months in jail for a gun-related crime, and Young Money, the record label he founded, later tweeted about the incident.

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