HOUSTON -- Just after midnight, Jim Proulx was awoken by a police SWAT team.

“There were two SWAT guys right here, pointing,” Proulx said. “I don’t know maybe M-14’s or something.”

“We thought it was the worst,” HPD Cpl. Dale Abbott. “We had already had reports there had been shots fired.”

After a four hour stand-off, the SWAT team had been duped.

“They see that I didn’t shoot my wife and that I don’t have a hostage,” Proulx said.

A 911 call that appeared to come from Proulx’s home phone was nothing but a hoax.

“This is not funny at all,” Cpl. Abbott said. “It puts his life in danger; puts our lives in danger. We don’t know what to expect.”

So what happened that night? Well it took a couple of years and more than 100 false SWAT calls for law enforcement agencies to finally figure it out, but when they did, a half dozen people from around the country were arrested — including three from Houston.

“It’s a very sophisticated scheme that these individuals pulled off, and they basically manipulate the computers and manipulate phone systems so they make it look like the phone call is coming from the unintended victim,” FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said.

The FBI said all the suspects met on telephone party lines and, in a nutshell, became involved in a game to try to out-prank each other.

“They do it because they can,” Dunlap said. “They do it because they think it’s a prank, and they think it’s amusing — which it’s not.”

The FBI executed two search warrants in Houston.

The first was at a town home on Augusta where Jason Trowbridge and his girlfriend Angela Roberson lived.

Federal court documents claim that Trowbridge participated in numerous “swatting” calls. It says he threatened to make more to obtain phone sex and money from other telephone party line participants.

The other warrant was executed at the home of 32-year-old Chad Ward. The FBI said the conspiracy costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands dollars and disrupted many lives.

“They laid me on the ground right here,” Proulx said.

All of the party line defendants were placed in federal prison, where most met face to face for the very first time.