LAKE COUNTY, Ohio — While videos exposing alleged predators have become popular on the internet, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said those "vigilantes" behind the camera are hindering a potential case rather than helping.
Recently, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit called 814PredHunters came to Painesville to meet with a 33-year-old man who was allegedly planning to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.
"He's living with his parents, so he didn't want the child to come to the house. He told her he would meet her at an intersection which was only really about 100 yards from his parents' house, and then they were gonna walk to the woods where he hunts at and have sex," 814PredHunters Founder Brian Knepp said.
Knepp and his team took a video of the confrontation on July 30.
We will not be sharing the name of the man in question as he has not been arrested as of Sunday.
In the video, the man admits to waiting for a 15-year-old.
"I made a stupid mistake. It was very stupid. I am sorry. I'm very sorry," the man told Knepp in the video.
Knepp said the man was never actually talking to a teenage girl, but that it was an adult decoy that had been chatting with him for two months.
Not only does Knepp hope run-ins like this will prevent that individual from considering sexual relations with a minor moving forward, but that an arrest will follow.
"I would say it's probably 50%. Maybe 40 to 50 that do get arrested, unfortunately," Knepp explained.
In this particular case, there has not been an arrest, as Lake County Deputy Sheriff Robert Izzo said there was no crime technically committed.
"Our detectives are certainly following up on it, but the law is pretty specific, so it's hard to say at this point if we'll be able to do anything with it. None of the correspondence came from actual law enforcement in this case, and obviously there was no juvenile that was actually involved in it, so it'll be a challenge to prosecute," Izzo said.
The Lake County Sheriff's Department has a detective who's involved with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
"It's disheartening how prevalent it is," Izzo said. "We are as eager as anybody to investigate these cases and and bring criminal charges to these people. We want to make sure that we have a rock solid case so that when it does come time to be charged that they're actually getting punished for what they're doing."
Ohio law requires the decoy involved in these cases to be a law enforcement officer.
Another aspect Izzo said is often overlooked when "vigilantes" take matters into their own hands is that they, too, will need to relinquish the electronics used to communicate with the alleged predator.
"All of their personal property that they're using becomes evidence and to do a thorough, proper, comprehensive investigation, we're gonna have to take all of those electronics and take whatever information is on them and include it in the investigation so my suggestion would be as soon as you come across something like this to let us know. Let us get involved and let us direct the investigation," Izzo said.
Izzo also stated that these "vigilantes" are inserting themselves into a potentially dangerous situation.
"That's about as unsafe of a situation as you can think of when you go to confront a suspect who is looking to engage an underage person in sex," Izzo said. "Not only will we probably not be able to make that case if we weren't involved in it, but you're also putting yourself in some pretty serious danger in a potentially volatile situation, so we definitely want to avoid that."
Knepp said he's disappointed to hear that the Painesville man who was allegedly looking to have sex with a minor will likely not be arrested.
"I can't see how any [District Attorney], judge can look at it not being prosecutable. Those individuals believed they were taking a child to have sex with them. There was no doubt in their mind, and it's all in black and white in the chat logs. There's no way anybody could look at that and say that individual was not targeting a child," Knepp said.
Even though Izzo is advising that people leave the justice seeking up to the professionals, Knepp said 814PredHunters will continue doing what it does.
"Not even a second thought," Knepp said. "These parents need to watch their kids, watch their phones, and limit their social media time to almost zero. These individuals out there are targeting these kids in in every way possible. The internet makes it very easy to do so," Knepp said.
Since 2022, Knepp said his team has tracked down 275 alleged predators.
