College Students Busted for Staging ‘Catch a Predator’ Sting

0:00 six college students are in big trouble right now facing felony charges after police say they lured a man to the college campus chased him down accused him of being a pedophile and a sexual predator which he wasn't turns out this was all stag for social media but the victim's complaints brought the suspects to a real life courtroom welcome to sidebar presented by law and crime I'm Jesse Weber To Catch a Predator is a cultural phenomenon on how many of you watched it out there right everybody knows that when Chris Hansen ask somebody to take a seat they're about to be busted for some sort of very inappropriate behavior usually with teens and children but when amateur Vigilantes get involved that is

0:45 when things can get pretty dicey I mean we just told you the other day about a group of YouTubers in Chesterfield Township Michigan that busted alleged Predators by pretending to be a 15-year-old boy on backtack days I'm honestly not a pedophile I think those guys are disgusting you do realize how serious this is right you're talking about kid 15-year-old a 15-year-old boydd stop stop antagonizing just stop you got your point across the group called police had them deal with the men 23-year-old Dylan Bishop 37-year-old Christopher Paul but now we go to Massachusetts because police in Massachusetts say not only did a group of college kids take matters into their own hands it spiraled out of control in a really bad way so to talk about about this I want to bring back on friend of

1:32 the show jenese County Michigan Sheriff Chris Swanson who actually does predator bus with Chris Hanson so good to see you thanks so much for taking the time um you know these bus they seem really thrilling a way to get the potential bad guys off the streets but it can get tricky wouldn't you say better left to the professionals before even get into what happened here you would agree no matter what the case even as what happened in Michigan leave it to the professionals right right 1,00% Chris Hansen is not a vigilante Chris Hansen works with law enforcement that's why we have a very powerful model because what's the danger right you talk about these amateurs let's say again not even getting into what happened in Massachusetts yet we talk about okay these are people who pretend to be somebody online they communicate PE with

2:18 people in a chat room or on dating profiles and then they get them they catch them and then they'll call law enforcement or they'll capture them um on you know video they'll make sure the videos go viral what is the problem for a prosecut for a prosecutor or law enforcement if you're having these amateur Vigilantes or these amateurs uh going out and doing this what's the problem there so let me answer it by first highlighting the danger of vigilan doing this without any law enforcement these individuals they're confronting are about to commit a life offense and when you're in that phase of of of a of a of a crime that mindset and something is going to either expose you or ruin your life they have no idea what that

3:04 individual could do and there's no backup they're not certified officers they don't have weapons thank God and they don't have the ability to call in backup they're only doing it to build a social media platform and I understand that it's Sensational journalism quot I understand that people want to do it but there's no value when it comes to holding people accountable on top of that whatever chat that they have whatever conversation whatever they confront it completely undermines the evidence process that we need that that can be brought into the actual case we don't have it's called fruit of the poisonous tree if any evidence comes that's not protected then we can't use it doesn't matter what happens so you put your life at risk to try to do something with in my opinion with with ill intent and then

3:49 you you bring somebody in that could probably kill you uh or at least do some damage and in this case we have the the ones that are posting it actually committing the crimes yeah this is a really disturbing case and look the stories we cover here on sidebar are quite disturbing they show that the world can be pretty scary it's true and for those of you thinking you know how do I go about protecting myself from all that's out there well I'll tell you what if you think about protecting your home I mean what property is more important than protecting your home I didn't even know this but apparently talking crime home title fraud is rampant right now yes so I met with the people over at home title lock they're amazing partner and sponsor they freak me out because look this is an example of a fraudulent Quick Claim Deed it got filled out with my information a forged signature a fake notary seal so not only could my

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5:22 happened back in October and according to police a 22-year-old North Carolina man who we're not going to be identifying was in town and sent a message on Tinder to an 18-year-old assumption student named Kelsey Brainard so the criminal complaint which was filed in wer District Court says that Kelsey's Tinder profile states her real age is 18 so she and the man they message back and forth on the app eventually switching over to Instagram where they sent explicit messages according to the complaint the man then agreed to meet Kelsey on campus now minutes after he arrives security camera footage shows the man running running from the building chased by dozens of students all yelling and screaming at him police responded to this disturbance and this is what they found out that

6:08 happened so the criminal complaint reads subsequent investigation revealed that the disturbance was was the result of a Tinder app contact coming to campus to meet an assumption student identified as Kelsey Brainard Miss Brainard reported that a creepy guy came to campus looking to meet an underage girl it was reported to responding uh rest life Personnel that the male just came to campus made Kelsey Brainard feel creepy and she texted to a friend Easton Randall who came down to help Kelsey with the sexual predator the subject was subsequently chased off of Campus by this male friend the man reported that he was communicating with this girl Kelsey brainer on Tinder and they were going to try and hook up he reported that Brainard invited him to come and meet her specifically asking him to meet her at Alumni Hall next to the Kennedy

6:54 building he reported he was led to the building by Miss Brainard and was only there for a few minutes minutes when a group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile and accusing him that he liked having sex with 17-year-old girls the subject reported that he was surrounded by the group and became fearful when he was unable to leave due to being grabbed and held back from leaving the subject reported that he was able to break free ran up the stairs being chased by the group of 25 or more people he reported he was chased to his car and was assaulted punched in the back of the head had his car door slammed on him and his vehicle kicked by the pursuing group officers observe surveillance footage which depicts Miss brainer escorting him into the building and down the stairs to the lounge area shortly thereafter you

7:39 can see him running up the stairs followed by a large group of students including Miss Brainard all with their cell phones out and what seems to be a recording of the whole episode a few minutes later you see the group coming back in laughing and high-fiving with each other Miss Brainard is included in the group wow so Chris this is not uh you know this is very different than what we just talked about before your thoughts on uh what we're hearing from this criminal complaint well you have almost a reverse crime because the ones that are perpetrating this are only doing it for Content creation and so they brought in an adult that they had communicated with on a dating app Tinder in order to come and meet an adult there

8:26 is no crime and when he came there expecting to meet somebody and was overwhelmed by this group You Could See by their actions their only intent was to just build up their content and that's where things went sideways this quote Predator that they called is now the victim in this case and that's why people that don't understand the law that don't understand these operations cannot be involved now police said they tried to get the truth from brainer tell us what happened here but according to them she was trying to avoid getting in trouble namely saying that this man was a Predator that she was scared she didn't know he was going to show up that she texted a friend who ran after him but the criminal complaint says the volume of students seen ascending the stairs in pursuit of him is in direct

9:12 contradiction of the information provided by Miss Brainard the interaction depicted in the footage occurs from start to finish in 2.35 minutes and does not appear to be a random occurrence but a deliberately staged event and this confrontation and investigation led to charges against six people five who were 18 or older one identifi unidentified juvenile who was 17 so charges were filed in December and the students were in court this month to enter guilty pleas Kelsey Brainard faces three charges kidnapping intimidation of a witness juror police or Court official and conspiracy all felonies the intimidation charge appears to be connected to misleading police in their investigation a friend Kevin Carrol reportedly admitted to police that he

9:57 assaulted this man as he was trying to get away allegedly hitting him with that car door as he tried to escape so in addition to kidnapping and conspiracy he faces a charge of assault and battery with a deadly weapon now the juvenile suspect is also accused of assaulting The Man by allegedly hitting him in the head and three other students were also charged with kid kidnapping and conspiracy Isabella Trudeau Wen Smith and Easton Randall Chris now they're facing significant charges here as a result of whatever you want to call this a prank a good time and the video evidence I guess they didn't think that far ahead that all of this could have been captured Jesse that's why your platform and your message is so vital to get this out to people who may be thinking or maybe three weeks from now

10:42 somebody comes up with the idea because you just had a situation where not only did an individual uh who came to the campus thinking there was going to be a legitimate connection get assaulted you've got six individuals whose lives will be changed forever and on top of that it was done at a college campus so now the college is brought in because under the clear act all these incidents have to be reported so now you've had long-term damage for people looking up and trying to think what kind of students go here you've completely undermined the system you've filed the false police report you've uh you know tarnished the reputation of a great University that's why people need to just think about what they're doing and think of the long-term ripple effect Predator investigations are not

11:27 entertainment we don't do these in order to get clicks even at the sheriff's office we do them to send a message that if there are predators that are going to seek underage or vulnerable victims that there is going to be an operator on the other side of that door whether it's Chris Hansen law enforcement or just the sheriff of jennessy County you better be ready to confront somebody but when somebody uses those and they undermine them and usurp them for entertainment value it totally demeans and takes away the the good that we're doing and by the way right I mean I'll emphasize this again this guy's completely innocent he wasn't doing anything illegal but even if he was so even if you're dealing with underage people and you're dealing with a predator to run up against him and to beat him up um that's still problematic in money ways right yeah I can tell you

12:14 the law does not allow us to use people that are not agents of law enforcement that's why there's a process we use con confidential informant people like Chris Hansen are in the field they're part of the operation but if I got a call that somebody had already started the conversation they already started chatting they had their own decoys they got them held down that's the problem you know I would much rather if they have information that somebody's reaching out to turn that right over to us and we'll work with you and you you can still feel like you're part of the the the the solution to try to end human trafficking but to do it with that motive and intent that is not the right way to do it yeah according to police going back to Briner she tried to deflect blame multiple times during interviews with police quote when confronted with the fact that the information that she was providing was

13:00 not factual but falsification and lies Miss brainer acknowledged that to be true Miss brainer continued to diminish her responsibility by indicating that she didn't know what was going to happen Miss brainer continued to allude to her not being a part of this incident when confronted about the lies she reported last night and the lies she continued to tell during her recorded interrogation she could not respond except to lay blame at the feet of her friend Easton Randall but police determined this was all a setup from the very beginning the goal of the Tinder invite was to simulate The Tick Tock fat of luring a sexual predator to a location and subsequently physically assaulting him or calling the police Mr Randall reported that Catch a Predator is a big thing on Tik Tok currently but this got out of hand and went bad Mr Randall reported that they all made suggestions

13:45 and agreed to what information was texted to the victim and that the others joined the conspiracy knowing of the unlawful plan intending to carry it out but Easton Randall told officers that things really got out of hand when someone in a dorm group chat used the word under rage to describe the person that the victim was trying to meet up with and that brought a whole surge of people coming down to the lounge area according to the complaint but that criminal complaint made clear the subject is not in any way designated a sexual predator and by the way I should you know it's important to note that not only is this guy Innocent but even if the victim had been told that this girl was 17 which there's apparently no evidence of sexual relations would have been legal because this age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 just a little

14:32 caveat there but Chris going back to you this idea of okay it's one thing now we want to have the we're jumping onto this fad this another dangerous fad we're seeing on social media but also group think the more people get involved the more it amplifies and one little thing you know saying underage is how you got apparently all these other groups of people coming in I mean according to his account what do you what's your takea away from that yeah it's called pack mentality people lose common sense when there's a number of people and let's just say there was one voice in that group that thought maybe this isn't a good idea they're drowned out by all the other ones who can't think straight because all they want to do is grab the content and then when you use trigger words like underage or vulnerable it gets everybody emotional trust me I get it I that's why

15:19 we do these Predator operations and I've rested hundreds of predators because I want to get those individuals that are seeking underage and vulnerable people but when it's not true it has a 10x effect on damage and that's what happened in this case the kidnapping charge on its own which they're all charged with carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison the assault and battery charge that Kevin Carol faces and Kelsey brainard's intimidation charge they also carry a maximum of 10 years in prison all the students have entered not guilty pleas they were released on their own recognizance they're going to do back in court at the end of March what do you think should be the appropriate punishment for these defendants well I don't think they even seen the end of it because the Civil liability that they open themselves up to because all but one is an adult so

16:06 they're going to be sued I can only imagine from this guy who was brought into this trap who knows what that's going to do but I'm going to tell you there has to be accountability and we see that in cases when there's juvenile offenders that make a threat against a school just like in this case this has a ripple effect this isn't just a small crime so I got to believe that the university is going to take harsh action that their criminal Behavior do I think they're going to go to prison no but I do think that're they're going to be held accountable on in a severe level because this has reached a number of audiences including yours this has to send a message that you cannot do this if you desire to work with law enforcement on an operation involves human trafficking then work with law enforcement all right I think that's a good message and hopefully people hear it you know we talk a lot about it but it's really the idea of these thingss

16:54 that are done by the professionals is really to make everybody aware of what is happening on the online chat rooms or what's happening on social media what's happening on dating apps so just again don't take matters into your own hands and particularly here where I don't even know if they're going to say they targeted the wrong guy or it was a mistake or it was blown out of proportion look what happened you now have a guy who was beat up uh who's a victim of this crime and you have six people who their lives are effectively ruined and may never be the same jenese County Sheriff Chris Swanson thanks so much for coming on great seeing you you too my brother take care and thank you for your audience all right everybody that's all we have for you right now here on sidebar thank you so much for joining us and as always please subscribe on YouTube Apple podcast

17:40 Spotify wherever you should get your podcast I'm Jesse Weber I'll speak to you next time [Music]