Per my other comment, you cannot hide behind "speech alone is harmless". If a reasonable person would think you were joking it might be a defense but if you too

Per my other comment, you cannot hide behind "speech alone is harmless". If a reasonable person would think you were joking it might be a defense but if you took the money anyway, I doubt that defense would hold up. We could easily make the penalty for SWATting life in prison. If you got caught the only free speech defense I could imagine would be that you sincerely believed that SWAT was needed and you were mistaken. Sometimes that defense would work, but I can imagine all kinds of scenarios in which the defense would be useless, e.g. you did it to the same guy multiple times, or you don't live anywhere near the location you sent SWAT to