Transcript of #351 Chris Hansen - Hollywood’s To Catch a Predator Movie: “They Make Me Look Like a Vampire”

When we first started building the Sean Ryan Show storefront, we didn't have everything figured out. We had products, merch, ideas, and a growing audience, but turning that into something people could actually shop from and keep them coming back, that takes the right setup. And that's why we built it on Shopify. Shopify gives you what you need to start selling without having to piece a bunch of different systems together. You can build the storefront, manage products, take payments, track orders, and keep the business moving from one place. And if you're just getting started, you don't need to know everything on day one. Shopify makes it simple to launch your store and start selling in a few steps. They also have design templates and AI site building tools to help you get the storefront looking right without starting from scratch. And once people are ready to buy, Shop Pay makes checkout fast and easy, which is huge. You don't want somebody ready to support your business And then lose them because you got a clunky checkout. I like Shopify's product so much, it's so simple, I had the CEO and founder, Tobi, on my show. So if you've been sitting on an idea, waiting until you have it figured out, stop waiting.

You can start simple, learn as you go, and build it from there. If you're ready to hear the— Ding! Of your first sale today, head over to shopify.com/SRS to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at shopify.com/SRS. That's shopify.com/srs.

Unsere Empfehlung für deinen Podcast: Frisches Obst und knackiges Gemüse von Aldi. Immer gut, immer günstig, immer vielfältig. Kurz gesagt: Frische für alle zum Aldi-Preis. Diese Woche Zespri Kiwi Sun Gold, je Stück für nur 59 Cent. Oder Avocado, je Stück für nur 88 Cent. Und weiter geht's. Einfach lauschen und genießen. Aldi. Gutes für alle.

Chris Hansen.

Yes, sir.

Welcome to the show.

It's a pleasure to be here, Sean.

It's an honor to have you. Like I, like I had mentioned, uh, right before we started rolling here, I've been watching you since, since I was a kid. Makes me feel old. So, um, but yeah, you know, I think there's only so many people that will even touch this subject matter. And, uh, you've obviously been doing it for over 20 years now. Sure. How long have you been doing this?

22 years. We did the first predator sting in March of 2004.

Wow.

Yeah.

You weren't doing this before then?

No. I mean, we did a lot of investigative work. Yeah, we went to India for child slave labor and Cambodia for sex tourism. And, and it was that Cambodia story that got me really focused on looking at what's happening in our country.

What was the Cambodian story?

We went over to Cambodia with an NGO, the International Justice Mission, and they were going to infiltrate a brothel in Sveypak, which is 11 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. And we went with, with hidden cameras and our producers and camera people posed as sex tourists from the US. And once we got in there, we found that they were selling children as young as 5 and 6 years old for sex, and they had code words. So adults would walk in there, and we caught all this on hidden camera. So boom boom would mean something, and yum yum would mean something else. And, and we got this video, and we went back with the IJM and Cambodian officials, and they busted this, this brothel. And we had caught an American doctor as well as some Western Europeans going there for sex. And we tracked him down in Guam, where he was practicing at the time, and confronted him. But they saved 37 children, girls, from that brothel. And we put this story together, it was called Children for Sale. And it was one of the most impactful hours of television I've ever been involved with. And we went back 4 years later, and checked on the girls who were in a bridge school at the time and just kind of chronicled their life.

But it got me thinking, as well as, you know, some stories that I've been seeing about kids being abused online, about investigating child predators. Mm-hmm. And then I started thinking, well, how do we do this? How do we infiltrate it? Because it's a news magazine. I was at Dateline at the time. And right around then, I became aware of this online watchdog group called Perverted Justice. And they were all volunteers, some of whom had been assaulted themselves as children. And they would go online posing as children. And if a guy agreed to meet to have sex, or if he brought it up first and then said he wanted to meet, they would merely post his identity on their website. And sometimes police would make a case out of it. And I thought, well, if we could combine that group's ability to be decoys with our ability to wire a house, it could be compelling. And so we did it at a house in Bethpage, Long Island. And in 2 and a half days, 17 men surfaced, including a New York City firefighter. And I thought, holy hell. You know, I'm driving over there at the beginning of this thing thinking, what if nobody shows up?

What if I've just blown $50K of the network's money. And here we now have this material. But again, we weren't collaborating with law enforcement in those first 2 stings we did. We had a security guy there, Ronnie Knight, my guy from NBC. And these guys would just leave. Jeez. After confronting them. And it got so crazy behind the scenes that the transcripts got mixed up. So by the time the 3rd guy walked in, I had the wrong transcript. I said, it says here you wanted to do this, that, and the other thing to a 14-year-old named Beth. No, it's not me. Sorry. I went back to get a second batch of transcripts, chats. No, it's not me. Finally, on the third try, I had the right transcripts with the right guy and was able to confront him.

Wow. So the Cambodia thing was kind of your first— that's what made it real for you?

It made it real. We had gone to India to investigate child slave labor in high-end fashion being sold on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue in New York and all throughout America. We had done some other investigative stuff, obviously with hidden cameras, that exposed other types of predators. But the Cambodian thing just hit me at a level that I've never felt before. Hmm. And I still remember when we went back to follow up with these girls. And at the end of the interview, obviously my Khmer is not very good, so we had translators and we communicated through the interview as best we could. And at the end, the girls say, when are you leaving? When are you going back to the United States? I said, well, at the end of the week. They said, can we go with you to the airport? I said, well, if it's okay with the school people, it's fine by me. What I didn't realize was the only Dairy Queen in Phnom Penh was at the airport. That's why they wanted to go say goodbye, to get a banana split, which is fine by me. And we do all that and we say goodbye and the bowing and everything.

And in the Phnom Penh airport, there's a 2-story glass window where you enter. And they walk me right up to the door. I go in, wave, and I go up to check in. And I look back and they've got their hands up against the glass. It's very emotional. And I get teary even talking about it all these years later. And I want to put my hands up against the glass, and the cameramen are crying, and the producer's crying, I'm crying. It was just this moment that never left. And I did some other stories in local news. Oakland County child killer, some other things that hit me. The Ronald Bailey story I'd investigated, a guy who kidnapped a couple of kids and killed them in Detroit as a local reporter. It's all boiling around in there. It's just how do you take it to the next level? And we were able to do it with the To Catch a Predator franchise and today with Takedown.

Man, my first, my first exposure that hit me was, um, I think you know him, uh, really good friend of mine, godfather of my son, uh, Ryan Montgomery.

Oh, I love Ryan. He's a great guy.

And, uh, you know, I'd seen your stuff obviously for years And I saw this little— I saw Instagram Reel with like no track. I don't even know how. It was like a God thing that it popped up because I wasn't interested in the subject. And I just, for whatever reason, I watched it and I couldn't believe what he was saying. And I was like, how is like nobody listening to this guy?

He's the real deal.

Oh yeah.

Ryan Montgomery.

And so I brought him on and I was I had a big audience and I was like, hey, I want to help you get this out, you know. And, and, um, so we— he came up and we did the thing. And, uh, and in that interview, he— I, I just needed to prove to myself, like, is this— like, is this as bad as these guys are all making it out to be? Yeah. He screen recorded, uh, a chat room. And it was— we screen recorded it to put it up. And I was— I just said, hey, take your laptop out. I just want to see how long this takes. I've got all day. We can sit here for hours. It took 5. It was like 5 seconds.

I'm still amazed how quickly these guys will have a discussion with somebody who's 13, 14, 15 years old in a chat room. And now what we're seeing in some of the more recent investigations is a scenario where a parent or stepparent or a guardian is offering to sell a child for sex. And there's no hesitation on the part of the predator. We had a case recently in San Francisco. We worked with the San Francisco County Sheriff's Office, and we had a guy who was an Ivy League-educated lawyer. married to the dean of a law school in San Francisco, ran a multi-hundred million dollar investment fund. And midday during the week in San Francisco, he shows up to meet someone who he thinks is the father of a 13 and 16-year-old boy— brothers. after a very graphic conversation about what he wants to do to them sexually. It's mind-boggling, Sean. I mean, here we are 22 years into this franchise, and I think we have deterred some guys. I certainly think that we've created a discussion, a dialogue, and an awareness for parents that didn't exist before we started doing this. And we followed the trends.

I mean, everything has changed from day one to today in terms of the platforms and how they work and how these guys try to groom children. They've gotten very good at it. But a lawyer in the middle of the day who's got a child of his own who's in 7th grade, and he's there after this graphic conversation, and all he can say to me is, I want a lawyer and I'm broken. Now, that didn't stop me from continuing to ask questions because he deserved it. But even in San Francisco, and this was a big deal that we were able to do a sting there, it showed commitment on the part of the sheriff, commitment on the part of the district attorney, and, and in some respects, the mayor, because it's a city where, as you know, oftentimes criminals seem to be given more rights than the victims of crime. And so it was a very significant sting operation. And of the 7 guys who got caught, 5 were immediately prosecuted, 4 with felonies, and none of those 4 were given bail in a city known for no bond, which to me was significant.

I would say so. That's actually I hate to say it, but it surprises me.

It surprised me, but there are new people in charge there. The new DA is sending a message, the new mayor is sending a message, and the sheriff is sending a message that he's been trying to send for a long time.

Are you, are you from— this is in San Francisco?

San Francisco.

When did this happen? When did this—

It was just, uh, about a month and a half ago.

Have you heard of this MAPS stuff? Minor Attracted Persons?

That's such bullshit.

Is this shit real?

I

mean, it seems— I mean, I find articles on it.

Predators are using it as an excuse. They're trying to legitimize—

I mean, it seems like there's an initiative behind it.

Pedophilia. Yeah, the pedophiles are trying to make it legitimate. But it's— you can't allow it. Why? They're going to argue that I'm just that way. I just like children. So it's okay. And they argue that children like this. No, children don't have a— children can't make a decision at their age. That's why we have an age of consent to protect our children.

I'm 100% with you. But weirder and weirder shit is happening inside the— not in the US, in the world, but also inside in the US. I mean, I would never think that an 8-year-old you know, could make the decision on whether they want to change genders or not,

right?

But it's happening.

Sure.

And so then I see this stuff pop up. I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago I started seeing it pop up, and I'm like, oh, this is probably just nonsense in the news. And then I look into a little bit, and I'm like, oh no, there's actual—

There are people pushing it, but they're all pedophiles. Yeah, nobody with any Common sense or intelligence thinks that's okay. Well,

let me give you an introduction, not that you need one. Chris Hansen, an award-winning investigative journalist best known for NBC's To Catch a Predator and recipient of 10 Emmy Awards covering everything from terrorism and aviation security to child exploitation. You spent more than 2 decades investigating online predators Working alongside law enforcement agencies across the country. You're the host of Takedown with Chris Hansen and the driving force behind True Blue, where you can continue conducting predator investigations today. Your latest work tackles the evolving threats facing children online, including investigations into Roblox and sextortion.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Yeah, I saw— we have a whole section on Roblox and we'll get to this, but I saw you hanging out with my buddy Schlep.

Schlep. What a great young man he is. And he's been through so much and he handles a lot of attention very well. And his mom is wonderful. His dad is wonderful and they're very helpful. in helping him through this. He's got great lawyers in Chicago. And I reached out to him when we started to investigate Roblox more than a year ago. And I said, look, I'd like you to collaborate. And when we do these documentaries, we get into somebody's life. We meet the parents and we meet the guardians and the spouses and the lawyers. And it's a big effort. And he is just a really good guy, and he's exceedingly bright, and he's extremely good at distilling these issues for parents. Mm-hmm. And breaking through the mystery of the technology to say, look, this is what's going on. And it's been infinitely helpful to me in the reporting of this story, as well as just understanding the landscape.

So the clip that I saw, I think it was both you guys up there.

Yeah.

And he was— it was a live event, I think.

Exactly.

And he was demonstrating, you know, all the things that are happening on Roblox, and they locked him out. They were watching his live— your guys' live. Right.

So we believe they either had somebody in the crowd. I mean, they're 5,000 or 6,000 people in this ballroom watching this, or they might have been monitoring it live because it was being streamed on Fox Nation from CrimeCon. So I'm up on the stage with Schlepp, the Attorney General for Louisiana, who's been very active here, and one of Schlepp's lawyers. And we had talked about it beforehand. Now, Schlepp is banned from Roblox. He's not allowed on it. The company has banned him. Moronic decision as far as I'm concerned, because he could be a great asset to them. That being said, he gets somebody else to make an account, hands the laptop to me, and instructs me how to just exist and be available for people to approach me. Could be a child. A couple guys cycle through, and then we meet, or we're approached by Freak Freak for Real. And he's going to start getting, you know, racy and dirty with us. And all of a sudden, do they ban Freak Freak for Real? No, they ban our account, which makes us think that Roblox was behind it. They didn't ban Freak Freak for Real for weeks, but they banned the innocent target of a potential predator.

What does that tell you about Roblox?

That's nothing good. I mean, it tells you they want to hide it. I mean, they're paying the man for it financially.

Yeah, it's a multi-billion-dollar publicly traded corporation that exists and continues to succeed because of engagement. And it's my belief that anything that limits engagement is something they don't want to entertain. Now, I had multiple discussions with their press people and even one Zoom call with their chief security officer about doing an interview and getting information as to what they are doing to make this platform safer. And they have done things— facial recognition, age verification. They've clamped down on some of the open chats. But Schlepp just today was showing how these pornographic areas of Roblox exist and can be accessed by children. And so my question to Roblox has always been, and the question of those in law enforcement who investigate these cases, why not let law enforcement go on your platform and conduct investigations, which they've refused to do? Really?

Yeah. We'll get more into this in a little bit. I want to do, you know, kind of start this with the mindset of a predator. I mean, like I said, you've been doing this for over 20 years. You have interacted with probably thousands of predators. I mean, You know, I'm sure you can talk about some commonalities, but what is it? What is it that— why? Why are they attracted to kids?

They're not all the same guy. I think there's a segment who are, for whatever reason, wired this way. They have an attraction to children, and that is never going to change. They're hardcore pedophiles. predators who are focused on getting with a child to satisfy their fantasy or to continue to satisfy, you know, their drive to fulfill this. They will get online. They will go to these different platforms where they know children exist. They are adept at grooming. I mean, if you read these chat logs, as many as I have, you will see patterns. It's almost like they go to a school. You know, we used to say when I was a kid, don't talk to strangers. Good advice then, good advice now. But the problem is the stranger on Wednesday is so adept at grooming, he's not a stranger by Friday. He's already gained your child's confidence. And children are vulnerable, and they look for these vulnerabilities, and they prey upon it. And I think in a world where porn is easy to find and even You know, CSAM images, child abuse of sexual material, is easy to find, way too easy to find. These guys continue to fuel this fantasy.

And they get to a point where the only thing that will satisfy them is the live meeting. And these guys know that law enforcement conducts these investigations every week in America. They certainly know that I'm out there working with law enforcement conducting these investigations. They're aware that, you know, every week we drop a new episode of Takedown on True Blue. Some guys recognize me before I can utter a word. You know, this show has been on for 22 years in one form or another. Yet the drive to have sex with a child is so strong that a lawyer, a lawyer in San Francisco who went to an Ivy League college, who's married with a child of his own, in the middle of the day, sneaks over to a house where he thinks a like-minded father is selling his 6 and 13-year-old boy after listing the specific sexual things he wants to do to those children. So the drive is there in some of these people. Where it comes from, is it childhood trauma? Is it just an effed up human being? I can't tell you.

But it seems like there's different— there's a couple of different categories.

There are. I think there's 3 in my experience.

That's what I was going to say. Right. I'll just—

That's one, the hardcore heavy hitter.

Satanic, like Satanism, satanic culture. I mean, that seems to be one. Another one is ego. Uh, the, the— to dominate an innocent child, uh, and, and to steal the innocence. And the third is, is attraction. Like, they're legitimately— I don't know if the first 2, you know, if that's really attraction or if that is, you know, the— but the 3rd, I think, is, is attraction. They're, they're legitimately— something's wrong with their— they're, they're attracted to kids, little kids. What are your— what do you think of that?

Well, I think that's true.

Do you categorize them differently?

I categorize them a little differently. What you said is absolutely accurate. Where you categorize them, you can choose the categories. I think there's the heavy hitter, as we discussed, and within all these categories, there's a stream of what you've just discussed. But I think there are the heavy hitters, there are the younger guys who are in their early 20s who know better, know it's wrong, who would never say this sort of stuff face to face, but they've become so desensitized because of the internet and the anonymity. They'll say things like, I want to blank your blank, or whatever very aggressive sexual talk they use. And they see an opportunity because they're socially inept in real life. They think they can take advantage of a 14-year-old who may be sexually active and get with them, and then maybe one day it wouldn't be illegal. But what's the difference between the damage caused by a 22-year-old and a 42-year-old? It's the same damage. It's illegal. You're an adult. You need to know better, right? And then there's this third category where, you know, a guy who could be standing next to you, you know, at the grocery store or the pharmacy doesn't have the word predator tattooed across his forehead.

You know, he works at a bank, he's a doctor, he could be in law enforcement. I mean, we had a guy last week in Louisiana who was a former police officer. We had a guy who sat on the board of a very expensive private Catholic school, coached sports, and they, for whatever reason, get caught up in this fantasy and they want to get with a young teen, even if they have children. And that's what blows me away, Sean, is some of these guys have kids. And I I invariably ask them, how would you feel if some guy walked into the back door of your home and was trying to sexually exploit your child? I'd kill him. Well, why is this any better than that? I deserve to be killed, or whatever, you know, they say. They say that? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. And some, I think, are relieved to be caught.

Really? You see that?

I've seen it.

How has this stuff changed over the years since you've been doing this?

Well, think about this. You know, in the beginning, we had decoys in chat rooms on AOL and Yahoo, maybe MySpace. That was it. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of maybe thousands, probably thousands of platforms upon which adults can reach out to children, including video games and platforms like Roblox. And once it starts there, it moves to Discord sometimes. And then whatever platform it starts with, it goes to texting. And that's very hard to monitor. So while it's more dispersed, this activity, than ever before. There's more of it going on, I'm convinced, based upon our experience now than 22 years ago, a lot more going on. There's just more opportunity.

Mm-hmm.

And it makes it harder to catch these guys. Now, law enforcement technology is, is, you know, picking up too. They're getting better at finding these guys. They're getting better at infiltrating some of these platforms. But there isn't a lot of protection for children on some of these things. They can access them. And we've seen this growth in adults selling kids. And when, when certain buyers of this see it, they don't even hesitate. They have a conversation with the parent. We had a TSA security guy who was driving from North Carolina to a family birthday party in Florida, started chatting on one of these sites, talked to somebody who identified themselves as the stepfather of a girl, 14-year-old girl, and he was going to pay to have sex with this girl. And you see him walk into the lobby of the hotel where we were set up. He gives him money, give him the hotel card, and he walks into the room. Sheriff's— Polk County Sheriff's grab him. And I'm trying to interview this guy, and he's crying, and this is entrapment, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, the evidence is in the chats.

You showed up. He was a newlywed. He was married, and he couldn't control himself. He wanted to have sex with this girl on that day on the way to a family party. And because the scenario involved the parent selling the children, it becomes a human trafficking charge. And in this particular case, he decided to fight it. They offered him a 15-year plea deal. And after having 3 different lawyers represent him, the family was supporting him and paying the bill, he goes to trial. And it was one of those few cases where I had to testify. And the jury was out 20 minutes and convicted him. Wow. And now because of that human trafficking charge, he's got to face mandatory life in prison. He could have gotten the 15 years on a plea, but he's going away for life in Florida. Natural life.

Good.

He deserves it.

A shirt can look good on the rack, but what matters is how it feels when you're moving around. Whether it holds up, and whether somebody put some thought into the details. Poncho gets those details right. I'm a fan of their denim. It's got that Western look, a soft, broken-in feel, and enough stretch to move with you. They've worked a lens cloth and sunglasses holder right into the shirt, along with reinforced seams. That's what I appreciate— useful details without sacrificing a solid, well-made shirt. They make men's performance shirts for the outdoors with flannel and corduroy options for fall. So whatever your style, they've got you covered. With so much clothing made to chase the next trend, Poncho is a brand focused on making something you'll actually use and want to keep wearing. It's not fast fashion, it's functional clothing that's built to last. This season, go to ponchooutdoors.com/seanryan and enter your email to get $10 off and free shipping on your first order. That's ponchooutdoors.com/seanryan. Head there, drop in your email, and get $10 off and free shipping.

In terms of being scared, we've had some, some moments. We had a moment in Alabama where a guy had a gun in his belt and he puts on the table and it spins right around pointing at me. As much as we wanted to be a deterrent, I don't think that anything will deter some of these guys. I always have people in every sting we do show up who know who I am, who've seen the show, who sometimes in the chat say, this sounds like a Chris Hansen operation.

Yeah, it definitely seems, uh, it doesn't seem, it is so much more accessible now.

I think a lot of this is through the fault of lazy parents. There's a phone.

I always am hesitant to blame parents. I mean, parents have a very serious responsibility here. And I understand where you're going with it. And it is— parents have to be aware. But I think the best thing I can tell parents And especially when it comes to sextortion and any sort of inappropriate activity, the best thing I can tell parents is that you have to create an environment where a child knows they can come to you when something happens, because the likelihood of something happening is great and they need an off-ramp. And they're always afraid to tell the parents because they don't want to lose access to their social media. which is their lives. And the longer you can delay that, the better off you are. And there's technology that parents can employ too, Bark and some others that are good. But it's a conversation you have to have very early with your children. And you can't just assume they're going to be okay because they live in a nice house and they've got loving parents who protect them. I mean, this is a whole other world out there. It's different today and it changes every year.

I mean, Brian has a saying, when you give your kid a phone, you don't give them access to the world, you give the world access to your kid. And this is— I don't—

That's very true.

I don't know how widespread this conversation actually is, but from my lens, It's pretty out there at this point. I mean, what do you— I feel like it's pretty well known how prevalent this is in the US. We've talked about it with Ryan twice, Schlepp, Tim Tebow, Jared Hudson. I mean, we've brought on so many different people to talk about the different ways this is happening. Now you. Yeah. you know, how to protect your kid. And, you know, the one thing to protect your kid is quit giving them a phone. Right. It's such an early age.

And protect the kid from the phone. I mean, so many times I think parents buy a phone and it has complete access and the parent has to go through and limit the access. You know, I think phones should be offered with all the protections already there and allow the parent to open them up as the child ages and gets more mature. Um, but it's, it's, the technology is overwhelming sometimes, I think, to parents. And, and parents have to get past that and just say, look, I'm getting this phone. Explain to me, person at the Apple Store, how to prevent my child from getting here, here, and here. And this Bark technology is, is Pretty solid stuff, and it allows you to monitor. There are a lot of technologies out there, but this is one that I happen to be familiar with, and I've talked to their chief security person there, and it's user-friendly. And you hate to think that you have to do that. You'd like to think that, okay, here's your phone, here are the rules, follow them. But you are giving, as Ryan Montgomery says, the world access to your child. And you can always give them more rope, but it's hard to bring it back in once they've had contact with somebody.

And I think parents also have to remember, you see these Instagram accounts and TikTok accounts where mothers are promoting their daughters' fashion, and they want to create identities as influencers at way too young of an age. Who do you think is looking at that stuff?

I mean,

who do you think is looking at a teenage girl in a bikini? Predators. And we know this.

Law enforcement, you know, from my vantage point, seems to be drastically behind this, behind on this. And so I'm just, you know, what, what law enforcement agencies have you seen that are really kind of leading the charge? That have been good to work with?

We work with probably a dozen different law enforcement agencies across the country where we are, you know, collaborating and conducting these stings. Some are big, some are medium-sized. But in my experience, virtually every law enforcement agency in this country is trying to do something. And many times they don't have the budget to do 2 major stings a year or a half a dozen smaller stings a year. They will take the cases as they come and try to investigate them. The technology changes quickly, and there's no lack of effort on the part of law enforcement. I mean, I had a full-circle moment earlier in June of this year. We were in Marion County, Florida, And they caught 58 guys in 6 days. They did a massive operation. It's our second one we've done with them. And they have some detectives who specialize in this work. But in one of the cases, a young detective had conducted the chat with this guy posing as a child. And as I'm getting ready to go interview the guy, I'm getting the briefing on the chat from the detective. It turns out He became a cop because he watched my early investigations of To Catch a Predator, and now he's briefing me so I can go conduct an interview with this guy for Takedown with Chris Hansen.

And it was just a striking full circle moment. I mean, I mean, there's no lack of, of energy or effort by law enforcement, but the problem is so overwhelming that law enforcement can't be there. Every day. I mean, I remember 20 years ago, if somebody walked into a local police department, they'd say, well, you know, there's not much we can do. Give us all the stuff. And when we get 3 or 4 cases like this, we'll go try to do something with the FBI and we'll try to track these guys down. That's not the case anymore. Virtually every police department, sheriff's office has an ICAC task force and at least a detective or 2 who specialize in these kinds of cases.

What did you call it? An ICAC?

ICAC.

What is that?

It's the Internet Crimes Against Children. It's a federal task force. Force that supplies intelligence, information, sometimes funding to law enforcement across the country. So in other words, you can go to ICAC training to learn how to, to, uh, be a decoy online. They have conferences. It's, it's, it's, it's a, you know, federal network that helps local law enforcement collaborate and create task forces to do these kind of stings. And it's made a difference. I mean, so it's not like law enforcement doesn't want to do it or doesn't do it. It's just the problem is so immense that parents have to take responsibility. The best protection for your kid is the fence you put around your home and the fence you put around your kid to protect them from the internet, which is ubiquitous and addictive and anonymous and Available 24/7.

How early do you think parents need to talk to their kids? What age?

The moment they have access to a phone.

You don't think before then?

Well, or a computer. I mean, I think the first conversation with a child is, there are adults online who like to trick kids. I don't want to see you get tricked. Kids don't like to be tricked, especially by adults. And I think you enter the conversation that way.

Man, I started talking to mine when they were in diapers.

Yeah,

one of them still in diapers. And, uh, well, not still, but, uh, but, uh,

you got to start early.

I mean,

that's how early enough—

we had Elizabeth Phillips on it. She talked about Canacook and what was going on there and all the sexual abuse. And then

look at the schools.

It's, it's, it's just, it's everywhere, you know. And, and one thing that that I've learned through these conversations is we can get, and rightly so, we can get upset at Kanika, we can get upset at Roblox, we can get upset at insert institution, game, chat room, social media platform, school. But these people, they migrate to wherever the kids are going to be.

Exactly.

It's coaches, it's dance teachers, it's cheerleading coaches, it's preachers, it's teachers. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. And they— so you are— it's like you were saying, it is the fence that you put around your kids, you know? And we Yes, we have to take these things down and get pissed off at them and all these things, but they just— it just shifts the minute Roblox is done. They're just moving to the next platform.

And consider this, and I didn't realize the numbers were this high up until a few months ago, but the Justice Department and the Department of Education, through 3 different administrations, have done studies. that indicate reliably that 10% of American schoolchildren will have an inappropriate sexually explicit dealing with a school employee.

10%? 10%.

That's 50 million kids a year. Now, I recently went with the the National Center for Victims of Crime up to Sacramento, California, to the statehouse. They were considering legislation that could have limited civil suits in these cases. And oftentimes, you know, the civil suit is the beginning of a criminal prosecution and the way that people get justice. Now you've got, you know, school districts trying to scare people that we can't afford these lawsuits and we can't do this. And you've got teachers unions who are lobbying saying that we don't want to have pay cuts because of these lawsuits. Well, police the schools and don't let the inappropriate behavior happen in the first place. That's how you stop it. But it's, it's, it's shocking. And some of these school cases are just shocking. And they occur all the time.

What are some of the— is there any new tactics that you know about that concern you?

I think the grooming that we see, and like you said, these people go to where the children are. And again, I don't want to disparage All teachers, because teachers are generally really fine human beings who do a great job with our children, and they're the unsung heroes of our society. I mean, they have our children 8 hours a day for some portion of their lives, and they can become great role models. But you gotta have rules, and you gotta have monitoring, and you gotta listen to kids, and you have to give kids a path just like parents do. Educators have to allow kids to have a path to report this stuff and not be ashamed. And they don't always do that. But the disturbing trends that I see are what happens online. And the fact that somebody thinks that they can negotiate with a parent to have access to exploit a child, their child, makes me indicate that they've seen this online. They know it exists. And they have a reasonable belief that it's not a sting operation, right? They go for it. So it's got to be going on. And there are sites and places and corners of the internet where this is promoted and where like-minded people gather to talk about how to do this.

Mm-hmm.

Just like we saw in Cambodia, you know, you'd see the Americans and the Western Europeans talking about how to go about this and where to go and how to, how to fulfill their fantasies.

You see a lot of social media vigilantes popping up.

Yeah.

And, you know, especially on YouTube, you know, it's, it's, it's happening more and more and more. And I love that that's happening. But what do you think that they're getting wrong?

Look, I'm all for bad guys getting caught and facing justice. And I don't have any exclusive rights on doing this sort of work. I think the issue is that some of these people doing this work don't have a background either in law enforcement or in journalism, and they don't have the collaboration that I have with law enforcement. So if you've got somebody whose background is as an internet or YouTube prankster, they're going to approach this as a prankster. And it's going to be as crazy and wild and embarrassing to the, to the predator as it possibly can be. Now, they deserve to be embarrassed. I get that, you know, but you have to follow the law on these things if you're going to have a successful prosecution. And I think some of the YouTubers who do this work, you know, they expose the guy. And then they're off in the wind. Sometimes there are some out there who have decent relationships with law enforcement and there are prosecutions. But I've seen a real mess out there. And I can tell you that we have above a 99% successful prosecution rate.

Congratulations.

Well, we work with law enforcement. I can't take credit for that. I mean, we're smart about who we work with. And we have protocols that essentially assure that.

I have something for

you. Yeah. What a great guy Tim Tebow is.

So Tim Tebow sat down with me a little— it's about a year and a half, 2 years ago. And he gave me this map. At the time, this map had 110,000 pin drops on it.

Hmm.

Now it has over 340,000 pin drops on it. And what these are, these are American IP addresses that are downloading CSAM images, child abuse material. And this is in the past 6 months.

And each one of those dots represents the re-victimization of the child pictured in that image. There's another group called the Child Rescue Coalition, and they use technology where they can identify the trade and transmission of child pornography in real time. And they have this technology and they use it with law enforcement for training. And we do some work with them. We're in the process of doing some reporting using their technology that I think is going to be startling. And it's international. It goes on every minute of every day. I know it's outrageous that this could be happening.

We're the number one consumer. The US is the number one consumer of this shit.

And who thinks that's okay? Obviously these people do.

So I want you to talk directly to the parents that are watching this right now. What is the, the darkest things that you want them to know about that's happening to these kids?

Well, I think there are people out there, as this shows, who want to see images of children being sexually exploited. And it doesn't matter whether they're strangers or known to them. They would love to see your child in a compromising, vulnerable position. And I also want to say to people who think it's okay to view these images, whether they're real images or whether they're AI, because they're getting their satisfaction by looking at those pictures and not actually offending. I want to tell people that almost without exception, predators who try to physically abuse children have already looked at these images, CSAM. And if you talk to a psychiatrist who works in prisons and talks to inmates who have nothing to lose, They will tell you that virtually without exception, there is a link between viewing CSAM, child pornography, and offending. And that's just a fact. So the more of this you see, the more predators you see in real life abusing children.

I would like the audience to know that the number one culprit of this stuff right here

Doesn't that blow you away?

It absolutely blows.

I mean, how can a parent— I mean, I've never seen CSAM. I never want to see it. It's surfaced in our investigations. The law enforcement authorities secure it, do what they do with it. I can't imagine how scarred I would be if I ever had to see an image like that. And yet there are people whose job it is to view it and identify it and categorize it as child-borne CSAM.

Do you ever talk to those guys?

You know what? It's something I want to do. I've talked to them in conversations. Obviously, the law enforcement personnel with whom we work in these stings, they, they've seen it. Um, they can only look at it so many times and they have to move on to a different sort of law enforcement because it's so disturbing. And it can— I mean, imagine having to look at that. I mean, it just— it, it could destroy you. I mean, it's been described to me

How do you keep yourself sane?

I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing. I see the bigger picture. I've been doing this a long time now. I've been embracing stoicism. I have realized the value of Getting out of that mode, whether it's hitting a ball with a stick or skiing down a mountain or going to Costco, cooking on the grill, you just have to leave it for a while.

How long did that take you? I mean, every time I go—

40 years.

Yeah. I'll bet your wife would have a different story to tell about this. Every time I talk about this, I go home and I'm— I'm just—

I'm fortunate to have a wife who's very supportive and very understanding, and she gets the mission. Right. My wife and I met when I'd already been doing this for a long time, and so there are no secrets, no sugarcoating it. Everybody knows what the mission is. And she believes in it and is incredibly helpful when it comes to certain aspects of social media and support and being at these events, you know, as I was last week at the National Center for Victims of Crime. You know, it's important to go to those things, to talk to the people. And not only as a journalist do I meet people who are important to have on my platforms, to give them a voice. You do get some really important stories out of that, but you also bring some good into the room too. Schlep and I presented at this event last week in Chicago, and it's important to have these collaborations. It allows me to clear my mind, and you're doing something good, but you're not in the in the middle of a sting every day. Those are intense. But I do— I think I'm pretty healthy. I think I'm a regular guy.

You don't want to be a caricature of yourself. I've benefited from a lot of public attention over the years, a lot of people are familiar with my work, and, and that's very gratifying. But you still got to maintain your, your own identity. You can't get caught up in all the TV part of it. I mean, look, it's flattering, it's important, and it's great that a lot of people see our work. You're the same way. I mean, everybody knows who Sean Ryan is. Right. You have a massively popular show, but you can never let that stuff go to your head. You got to be the same guy you were hauling drywall, working your way through college, or working in the back of Mr. Pastry's Bakery, paying half your high school tuition. You're a military guy. You've seen things I can't even imagine. I thank you for your service to our country. But I mean, to me, that would be a harder Headspace to deal with than what I see, which is graphic and disturbing to most regular human beings. But you can either let it define you or you define it, and you use that and harness that energy to do something that is important and helps people.

I mean, another question. I mean, you've seen right here.

Yeah.

340,000.

This is the most horrible thing you could imagine.

In the past 6 months, 340,000. You know, I talked to— me and Ryan talked very often.

Yeah.

And, you know, I can't remember the exact statistic. I texted him right before we came down here to try to get it from him, but So forgive me, I don't— it's less than 10. Mm-hmm. I think it's more like 1 in 5, 1 in 6 people statistically are at some time in their life going to make a move on a child, take a step towards being a predator. And you, you've, you've been around this for 20-plus years. You've seen It's, it's, it's, it's, it's everybody. It's, it's stand— what appear to be stand-up good citizens. It's teachers, it's preachers, it's firefighters, it's law enforcement, it's military, it's doctors, it's lawyers, it's ev— it's, it's biological fathers is the most common culprit. And so, you know, when you hear a stat that's like 1 in 5, 1 in 6, maybe even 1 in 10, I mean, that's most rooms that you're in, right? Most rooms that you're in, statistically, you can say somebody in this room is a pedophile. And I've seen it. You know, I, I, I, I talk to Ryan a lot. I'm like, I, I tell him, like, you, you have— you've got to take a break, man.

Yeah.

And, and I could see, like, the distrust, you know, everywhere he goes. I can see it. He'll talk about it. You know, somebody in this room right now is a pedophile, statistically. How do you— I mean, does that happen to you?

Well,

you look around a room and you're like, holy shit, somebody in here. There's 20 people.

Look, I've got a very dark sense of humor, right? And, and there's, there's a, there's a darkly humorous aspect to these investigations, right? Whether you like it or not, there are dark humorous moments in a very serious subject. And I lean into that. And I think that is part of what has connected me to the audience. But if you don't sometimes find even a dark sense of humor in something, you go mad. Right.

Well, it's a coping— I mean, yeah, it is very familiar with dark humor.

Right. And so you never want to cross the line and be inappropriate or to be disrespectful. of this subject matter or survivors or parents of survivors. But I think that is helpful. But I do walk into a room sometimes and say, right or wrong, I'll be seeing him in a dark kitchen one day.

Honestly, though, do you feel like it has destroyed trust in humanity?

I don't think it's destroyed my trust in humanity. I think it's made me skeptical. Of adults who may or may not be into something like this. I mean, I run with a pretty tight circle. I'm in public all the time. I talk to people. I don't immediately suspect somebody of being a predator. I do wonder sometimes, though, that in a public speaking setting, Like CrimeCon, you know, being at a victims conference. I mean, they control who goes there pretty carefully, but I mean, what's to stop a predator from trying to pick up tips by going to, you know, one of those things?

Nothing.

You know,

I'm sure there's a lot of them. Have you ever had— have you ever had somebody that's That you've caught, reached back out years later?

I've reached out to many of them, and with very limited success of having them come on and talk to me about it. We had a doctor in Michigan who showed up in a sting, got caught meeting a teenage girl, came in, brought Oreos and red wine and Patter on the bottom when he walked in and, and caught him. And, you know, here's a guy who saw 18 patients in one day, and throughout all of it, he's texting with this child, sending pictures of his genitals. 18 patients. And then gets off of work, wealthy guy dressed beautifully, drives his Range Rover over, and he's going to have sex with this girl. We are there. We catch him. He admits it doesn't look good but denies, you know, that he was going to go through with it. Now, he had brought Oreo cookies specifically because he had a fantasy about seeing them caught in her braces, right? And wine to loosen her up. And he faked a heart attack in the middle of the whole thing and, you know, was trying to get out of being arrested. Well, you know, they took him away. No criminal history, no child porn.

He gets a plea deal on probation. And he sat down with me after all that and did a lengthy interview. Now, I can't swear to you that he was completely honest. He might have been checking the box and fulfilling some promise to his wife to come clean on this and to the judge in the case. But he did talk in detail about his addiction to pornography. And how he had met other women online of age, although on the younger side, for sexual liaisons. And he started to get into how this slipped into younger and younger women. And that was what ended him up in that sting operation.

How did it happen? What did he say?

He said that he was addicted to going online, starting with the porn. The porn didn't do it for him anymore, so he wanted to meet girls. When there wasn't a girl of age available, he went younger and started talking to this 15-year-old, or someone decoy posing as a 15-year-old. But it's this slide, you know. I don't think some of these guys wake up and say, okay, I'm gonna go You know, over the next course of, you know, 2 years, I'm going to start into this path that's going to land me in a sting operation. It happens gradually, I think, to some of these guys.

How often do these people reoffend?

That's a great question. I think until they're caught. I don't think you get a guy who successfully fulfills the fantasy and says, oh, that's it, I've done it. It doesn't make sense to me.

I guess I meant after—

Oh, after we catch them? We've, we've had a couple of guys we've caught twice. We've had numerous guys who have chatted to somebody they thought they were younger, like in 2 different investigations, then finally show up in the 3rd. We've had guys who've been caught before Did prison time and they're back at it again. So I think, I think given the opportunity, they will reoffend in many cases.

Let's move on to the roadblocks conversation. Kind of started it, you know, and It's been a hell of a team effort between me, you, Ryan, Schlep. And I just want to bring some good news into this. Yeah.

We need some good news.

Yeah. Here's some. I think a month after, and I should have looked this up actually. I did a video on it, but I think it was a month after I had Ryan on. He was the first person that kind of exposed the Roblox stuff to me. And, um, we did an episode together where it was pretty much all about that and the 764 cult. And I believe within 30 days they had taken, I think it was a $4 billion hit in their stock. And you could see the graph from— no, it was November 20th.

I think it's down 70%.

So I pulled it. And from November 20th, 2025 to September 15th, 2026, November 20th being when I had Ryan on and we really blew the discussion up. And then I've had Schlepp on and you've worked with Schlepp and it's become quite the conversation. November 20th, their stock closed at $91.70. September 15th, today, 2026, $50.62. They have had a share price decline of 44.8% and lost $28.2 billion.

Wow.

Since that day. I think that's good news. You know, we talked about—

I think it's good news because we got their attention. But, you know, we, we still see them as a corporate entity blaming the victim sometimes. I had an executive with Roblox tell me that they weren't going to participate in my documentary because I had interviewed Schlepp and Liz Murrell, the Attorney General, State of Louisiana. I said, what does that have to do with anything? He said, well, it's going to be a hit job. I said, it's not going to be a hit job. Look, I've done Critical stories with major corporations— Boeing when they're having trouble with the 737, Ford with sexual harassment— you know what the smart companies do? They invite you to the factory. They take you for a tour inside the rudder assembly unit where they've got a new part or a new method to make sure there's no problem going forward. They say, thank you for bringing this to our attention, and here's what we're going to do to fix the problem. Mm-hmm. Even though we don't think it led to a fatal crash. We think it was other stuff, but here's what we're doing. That's what smart companies do. What this company did, either through arrogance or fear because they didn't want to sit down across from me, was, we'll give you a statement or we'll give you a canned video, a talk from the CEO or the chief security officer.

And that's chicken shit. Mm-hmm. That's just bad corporate policy. And the press guy knows better because he used to be a producer with one of the networks. And I explained it to him. I said, look, as I say to the predators in my stings, you see how this looks? Not good. And so we went as part of the documentary to Roblox headquarters in San Mateo. And I had to do some on-camera pieces, and we made them nervous. And I walked up to one of the security guys. I said, is, you know, is the CEO in? Is the chief security officer? No, no, they're not in that day. And, you know, they were all ramped up, and I knew they weren't going to let us in. But, you know, we had to be there for some other production stuff anyway. It's just, it's not good corporate citizenship. And why not, as I mentioned, why not let law enforcement do a couple stings, get people's attention? They're busy And they're settling these cases throughout the country, $12 million here, $10 million there. But when they go into arbitration with kids who have been preyed upon on Roblox, they're making them sign nondisclosure agreements.

They're making them sign gag orders so they can't tell the story. They're punishing the victim. And if you go talk to the Florida attorney general, James Uthmeyer, who's a sharp guy, he'll suggest to you that maybe there's a criminal invest— not just civil, but potentially a criminal investigation here. He refused to settle. Liz Murrell has refused to settle in Louisiana. Some other states have settled, and that's fine for them. But a lot of them want more out of Roblox, and they continue to investigate Roblox.

What I meant by the good news is—

We got their attention.

$28 billion. What this represents to me is— that's great to take down the game, to take down an institution, whatever. But what this represents to me, $28 billion loss in 10 months, is concerned parents who've woken up, who've pulled their kid off the game, who've yanked their stock. And what it also does is this is a signal to other games that are looking, you know, that they're coming up— Other platforms like Discord. Holy shit. Yeah, we're gonna have to— we're actually gonna have to take this seriously or this is gonna be us.

Exactly.

You know, and so, yeah, like, bad on Roblox. But the messaging that this does, you know, when this— when this is out there, the $28 billion hit in 10 months. Who knows what it'll be by the time the year's up and, and how many parents that, you know, the stuff that people like us are doing are— it's educating parents.

And at what point do— at what point do— you're exactly right on parents, because I hear all the time that parents are not letting their kids go on Roblox. You know, it used to be, well, what's the harm? It's educational. They're learning how to create things and program things, and they're playing with Lego-looking characters. How bad could it be? And then you dig a little deeper and see it's very bad and all the sexual stuff and the contacts from adults and everything else. But it does send a message. I think you're absolutely right. And it's going to be a warning to other companies and other platforms. And how long are stockholders going to put up with this? Not long.

How did Roblox pop up on your radar?

My partner at True Blue, Sean Reck, had a son who was right in the midst of this, and his son was approached in an inappropriate way and told his dad. And he also saw how much money was being spent on games and Robux, which is the currency on Roblox. And he and I had a discussion, and I had been following the Schlepp situation, independent of that. And we just decided that this has got to be the next priority for a documentary. And I reached out to Schlepp and he contacted his attorneys. We all got together and we started reporting on it. And, you know, we had a guy in the documentary who was in his 30s. You know, we called him Patient Zero, Victim Zero, and a military guy. He could deadlift £700. And he was brought to tears remembering how he was exploited by a predator on Roblox who convinced him as a teenager to actually meet in person and was exploited. And he was a tough guy with kids of his own, cleared out the house. We sat down and interviewed him. And still, 15 years later, he's shocked. And deeply impacted by this.

And that gets your attention. You're sitting across from a guy like you and I are sitting during an interview, strong man, leader of his household, and is still coping with this all these years later.

Do you want to talk about some of the effects of exploitation?

Sure. I mean, you damage a child for the rest of their lives. I mean, this is something that happens at an age of innocence. And when you steal that from a child, you're taking something that can never be given back. And that child will always carry the scars. I mean, it is rare When I'm out in public or my wife and I are out to dinner or we're at a conference or we're doing something, when somebody doesn't come up to me to say, hey, I just want to take a moment, do you have a moment, can you chat? I say, sure, absolutely. This happened to me when I was a child and I never got justice. And every time I see you go after an entity like Roblox or take down a predator, It gives me a sense of power and control back because somebody's out there doing it. And that, to me, I mean, that's the greatest compliment that you can get. I mean, first of all, it takes huge guts to come forward and admit that. How many people are out suffering in silence that never wanted to come to terms with this?

You know, I would talk to— when we were in Sacramento, there's a woman who was part of the group, and she was a school administrator. And a case like this of a teacher sexually exploiting a student came in front of her, and she had a flashback to when she was exploited when she was in school by a teacher. And not only is she as an administrator trying to deal with this, she now has to come to grips with the fact that she was victimized and had buried this memory so deeply that she wasn't even dealing with it in a healthy way. Another generation. And so it's hard to put a child back together. Fortunately, there are a lot of great therapists and people involved in treatment, but you take something that these kids never get back. And you see these guys come into the stings and say, I was just chatting. I didn't really mean it. You know, I said, well, you sent a picture of your, your private parts. Yeah. But what impact do you think that would have on a child whose first image of the male anatomy as a 13 or 14-year-old girl is you sending that picture in a chat room?

What, what impact do you think that has on that child's psyche? Well, I never thought of that. Yeah. Well, think about it. Think about it as they haul your ass to the county jail. Because you sent it, and then you showed up to meet her. And what do you think was going to happen if a child was here and we weren't? Because I can tell you, I can predict without fear of contradiction what would happen, and you would be all over that child. And that's the way I talk to him. And sometimes I use a different technique to get him to open up. But, you know, they don't deserve soft treatment here.

What would you like to see Roblox change, if anything?

I would like to see Roblox allow law enforcement to conduct investigations on the platform. And I think that would send a message to predators on the platform that you better cut it out. They have made some changes when it comes to age verification. And, and other areas. And I think there are some positive things that happen on Roblox in terms of interaction and creative activities and building games and things, but they can't seem to get out of their own way on some of this stuff. And I don't pretend to be a technical expert on it. Schlep knows more about it than I do, the, you know, the how to build the games and do all that stuff and where the weaknesses are. But you have a kid who could be an ambassador of safety for them, and what do they do? They ban him. They get a cease and desist order. They should make this kid a vice president of safety and security at Roblox and put him to work. Let him loose. Help us. Get a Ryan Montgomery in there as a consultant. What do we do? But no, they're so protective. We created this world.

We know what's best for it. And that's the problem. And that's going to be their Achilles heel in all this.

Let's talk about your new documentary, this extortion documentary.

Wow. This is something that's near and dear to my heart. I sat across 4 different sets of parents who lost a child. Good parents, good children, athletes, good students, girlfriends. And they got caught up in this world and they couldn't see a way out of it. They were victimized by criminals half a world away, Nigeria. They were posing as Good-looking young teen girls. They start a conversation. I'll show you yours, you show me mine. Pictures are switched, exchanged, and then the extortion comes. I'm going to put these all over your grandma's Facebook page. I'm going to show the world what you did, you pervert. You're a predator. You're a horrible human being. You're going to go to jail. Give me $100. What's a kid got at 15, 16 years old? Grand in the bank, gift cards. They drain them and then they taunt them. And these kids get so caught up in the moment and so ashamed of what they did, even though it's, you know, stupid kid stuff. I mean, so what? In the worst case scenario, you send a picture of your junk to somebody you thought was a girl who ended up being a scam artist.

Let them put it on the internet. Why? I would— it's going to be over in 15 minutes. But they can't see that. And so instead, they hide this in shame. And in the case of one young man in South Carolina, whose dad's a state representative there, he's become an activist and a good friend. What does the kid do? He goes and gets dad's gun, passes dad in the hallway, goes to the bathroom and kills himself, shoots himself dead. Oh, my God. Now you sit across from that dad, Brandon Guffey. and have him tell you what a great kid his kid was and see if that doesn't impact you. And now he's working tirelessly. He's got a book coming out. You sit across from the parents in Marquette, Michigan, of a young man, Jordan DeMay, athlete, same deal, girlfriend. kills himself. They're supposed to go to Florida the next day on vacation, the whole family. Same thing in San Jose to another young man. Same thing in Ohio to another young man. And they all have the same message, these parents: you've got to go to your kids and say, look, I understand, you know, this world is full of temptation and you're just a kid, and if something happens, you need to come to me.

Because had each of these young men gotten through 30 minutes, 30 minutes to clear their heads, to have the dad say, yeah, God, you're a fucking knucklehead. Don't let it happen again. They'd be alive today. All these kids should be in college right now. All of them. And they're dead. Now, in some of these cases, arrests have been made. You know, it used to be impossible to go to Nigeria and find one of these criminals. But they got some of the money people on this side. And in the Michigan case, the FBI went over there and they started bracing people. And they called in some favors and they arrested these scammers, extradited them back to Michigan. and got guilty pleas. They're doing prison time now, federal prison time. That doesn't bring the young man back, but at least it sends a message to some of these other guys to not let this happen. But it's, it's, it's rampant. And these guys operate overseas with impunity.

How are they luring them in?

They get a picture of a pretty girl. They go on— and this isn't happening on some dark web. This is happening on Instagram and Facebook. And hey, how you doing? You know, you're a 15-year-old boy. You see a hot 15-year-old girl, you start chatting. I'll send you a picture. Send me one of yours. That's it. That's how it starts. And it seems like— and it is, you know, something relatively innocent, if not stupid, of the boy to do it. But they're thinking with their 15 or 16-year-old mind, and they get caught up in something that's overwhelming to them in the moment. And so the idea of doing the documentary was to— and we made this free on True Blue. Anybody can watch it. You don't even have to be a subscriber. Just go there. It's right there. You watch it. And it's really compelling and it's sad. But at the end, you see law enforcement actually doing something about this. And we hope it's a teachable moment for every parent in America to take some time and say, look, come to me if something happens. You know, it's not that different than the, than the, you know, drinking and driving conversation we have with kids.

You know, if you have a designated driver, and if the designated driver has a beer, then call me. And if I'm not available, I'll send an Uber. But We're not going to yell at you that night. We'll sort it out the next day, but just get everybody home safe. We understand temptation. We understand kids doing what they're not supposed to do. I did it. You did it. We all did it. Let's just get everybody home safe just for this one night, and we can talk about it tomorrow. You don't have to solve the world's problems. You don't have to get every predator in one night. You don't have to make your kid the best kid in the whole world. Just get through tonight. Let's get through that 30 minutes when those kids took their own lives, and then we'll fix it tomorrow.

How are they getting to the girls?

Well, the girls don't seem to be as big of targets in the same way that the boys are in terms of the sextortion. It does happen. Sometimes the criminals are using AI and they'll take a girl's face and put it on a body and say, I'm going to send this out to everybody if you don't pay me money. And then they get into a situation. But I think the psychology of a young woman is one that is more likely to go to the mom and say, this happened. And then they go to the school and then they backtrack it and there's investigation. I mean, the prime target of this sort of sextortion is young males.

You know, not to change the subject, but I mean, how about extortion with girls? How are they doing?

Well, I think, I think a lot of it is that, that they, they use AI to create an image that doesn't exist and threaten them and say, we're going to do this. Or there's a boyfriend-girlfriend situation. where pictures are taken and they get leaked out, or there's a threat of leaking them out and, you know, money is demanded. But in our investigation, at least what we saw was more of the young men being targeted than young women.

Have you seen a lot of bribery with girls? Oh, we'll get you this Louis Vuitton purse. I'm going to get you this.

Well, I think that's part of the— that's part of the grooming process. Yeah. And that's what we see in, um, you know, on very mainstream platforms— Instagram, uh, TikTok even, um, you know, where kids are, Facebook. I mean, we've been using Facebook in some of the sting operations now, and it's, you know, we rotate around, but it's— this stuff, again, it's not dark web stuff.

Is there anyone that you see more activity on than the other?

It rotates. I mean, obviously the darker places that are less regulated, like Discord, it's prone to that kind of activity. But it's everywhere.

Well, Chris, let's take a quick break.

Sure.

There's so much conflicting advice about what to feed your dog. It's hard to know who to trust. With my dog, Stanley, I want to know what's actually in his food and who's behind it. That's why I choose Sundays for Dogs. Sundays is led and operated by Dr. Tori Waxman, a practicing veterinarian. She founded the company, formulates every recipe, and still runs it today. It's the food she feeds her own dog. The recipes have more than 80% all-natural meat, With ingredients like kale, ginger, and blueberries. They're gently air-dried with no fillers or synthetic additives. Stanley doesn't need any convincing when I set his bowl down either. He runs straight to it. I've noticed a difference in his energy and his coat too. Plus, there's no fridge, freezer, or prep to deal with. I just scoop and serve. It's simple, And I feel good knowing a vet who cares is behind Stanley's food. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code SRS50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50. sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50. SRS50 or use code SRS50 at checkout. All right, Chris, we're back from the break and I wanted to get into this, this new primetime, uh, movie that came out.

Someone else tells— What?

There's a movie?

Yeah, that's, that's the rumor. But, uh, A24 is the production company who made it. Doesn't sound like you're thrilled with it because It sounds like the person might be playing you.

Well, that's— I've not seen the movie.

You haven't seen it?

I haven't seen it. So A24 came to me. I had heard they're making a movie. And last January, a person I work with who knows of the director, Lance Oppenheim, reached out on my behalf. to say, what's going on? What are you doing? Are you going to approach Chris on this? And he says, ah, I'm a big fan of Chris's. It's a love letter to Chris, but it gets a little weird in the storytelling. And yeah, the studio is going to reach out. Crickets. Nothing. So on May 27th of this year, A24 reaches out, sends me a partial movie trailer, and says, we're going to release this tomorrow. Just wanted you to know, we hope you can be a part of the promotion of the film, and we'd like to explore some advertising opportunities on your platforms— True Blue Streaming Network, the 2 podcasts, Have a Seat with Chris Hansen, Predators I've Caught. And, and, you know, we can get some content from the movie and put it across your social media platforms as well. And I said, well, you know, I, I can't do that until I see a script or a film and at least some sort of a rough cut?

Well, we'll figure that out. Now, I'm suspicious because they use my name, my obviously image and likeness. They use the names of my producer, some of my family members, and yet they never came to me to even have a discussion out of courtesy that they're making a film That is a work of fiction. Right? It's loosely based on a year in the life of the Predator investigation. But they never came to me to even say, hey, we're using your name. We've got this great actor, Robert Pattinson, with whom I have no issue. He's an actor, he's doing his job, who's going to impersonate you even though he's never met you, never had a discussion, never talked about storylines. Now, as you know, The real story is dramatic enough, but they've decided to make something darker, more twisted, something that, as far as I can tell from the trailer, aside from him saying, I'm Chris Hansen and have a seat over there, nothing in that trailer ever happened in real life. And we've been painstakingly transparent about our methodology from the beginning and are today. So people will know that this is fiction, that it's dark.

But it's sneaky and disingenuous on the part of A24 to do it this way. And I think it's an insult to the thousands of men and women who work in this space trying to protect children from predators every day. Not just me, but to all the law enforcement people. They've taken something that's so important, I think, and that has had such a positive effect, and they've twisted it into something dark, something that is a story of television executives and television talent who are power hungry and trying to do something that's somehow inappropriate. And that's my take on it.

Wow. I would think that would— I mean, do you feel violated?

I feel—

how— I mean, have you seen any clips or anything? How—

I've seen the trailer. I've seen the trailer. And they offered— to be fair, they offered a screening to me a few weeks ago at A24 offices in New York. And I knew that they were going to ask me to sign an NDA. They had sent me the NDA in advance. I showed the NDA to lawyers who said, don't sign, don't sign anything. They should at least give you the courtesy of watching the film. They use your name. They imitate you. They do all that.

They do use your name?

They use my name.

Wow.

It's Chris Hansen.

Are you serious?

Yes. This isn't, you know, Keith Jansen. It's Chris Hansen. They use it in a twisted, work of fiction. Now, I'm not dead. This isn't, you know, a story about Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or the retelling of the crossing of the Delaware.

Oh, like how?

It shouldn't be.

Is that legal?

Yeah, it's being reviewed. We're taking a look at it.

It's being reviewed?

I mean, it's being reviewed by my lawyers. They've done it. And I think they did it. I mean, think about this. If you're creating a fictional movie, a dramatization of real events, why do you then need to use the real guy's name? You use it because it's of commercial value, because it's a brand, because I've spent 45 years building this brand.

Legitimizes it.

Legitimizes it. And I think— and the lawyers in the industry with whom I've had discussions think that they're sort of hoping that, you know, I'd fight it or try to get a cease and desist because then it becomes the movie Chris Hansen doesn't want you to see. Right? They use that as part of the promotion.

Holy shit.

Yeah. So that's the, that's, that's the playing field here. So they've— you've got a movie about a guy who's done something I think is pretty admirable and who continues to do it. And they've twisted this into a dark work of fiction. I mean, they make me look like a vampire. They've got me shirtless in front of a Hollywood dressing mirror ruminating about how I'm going to make this show successful and take over for the time slot of Lost at the time because it's very much of a period film. And it's an insult to do something like that to somebody. Like me, I think. And so we go to the screening, and I know I'm not going to sign the NDA, but I'm hoping they'll show me the film regardless. And I know that the film was shown to another fellow named David Aussett, who was the director of a documentary that came out about a year ago called Predators. And I did an interview for it. I cooperated. I didn't think it was spectacular. It was interesting, but it was more like, well, should we be nicer to the predators? It took the opposite view of this in some ways, but there were some good things about it too.

So I know that Ossit was brought into a screening room and showed— shown the film without an NDA. And I said to the lovely PR people at A24 that I knew David Ossit, why can't I see it? And we go back and forth, so we leave. We get our coffee and we see the screening room, but we don't get to see the film. We leave, everybody's very pleasant. And I said, look, if you can figure out a way to let me see it without signing this NDA, which specifically precludes me from any future legal action against A24—

Well, of course.

You know, and they said, oh, it's just our basic boilerplate. Well, it's your basic boilerplate if you're the spouse of a producer involved with the film. But if you're Chris Hansen, it's not boilerplate, it's restrictive. And so we're back and forth, and the lawyer gets involved in the chain of emails that following day, or that same day. And they said, well, that, that other screening, that it wasn't an official A24 screening, that was just with somebody, David Asit, who was a consultant on the film. I said, well, show me that screening. And then that was the end of the conversation. So I've not spoken to them since. So I will go see this film In a theater in New York, buy a ticket, bring my producer with some other people, and we'll watch it. And then I'll react to it. I'll do some man-on-the-street interviews with other theatergoers, and we'll put it on my podcast, and I'll tell people what I think of it after I see it. Isn't that twisted?

I would be infuriated.

Yeah, I don't get angry.

They stole your image and likeness.

They did. I mean, you could argue, Sean. I mean, why is this not identity theft? If I take Sean Ryan's name and use it for a commercial enterprise, make money, isn't that identity theft?

Yeah.

Right? I mean, it just— and I suppose in some ways, given what we know about Hollywood, well, it's not surprising. No, we're talking about an industry that was led—

The scummiest of scum.

Led by one of the most prolific predators to ever walk the planet, Harvey Weinstein.

Oh man, I wish— I wish they would just go away. There's— it's— I just feel like it's so close. Doing an industry that has completely imploded itself. This— like, we're this close. Just let's just get it over with.

Like, who thinks that that's an okay thing to do?

Hollywood and everybody in it.

Lance Oppenheim, apparently. A love letter to Chris Hansen. You're kidding me.

When does it come out?

I think in New York it comes out September 24th and nationwide September 25th. They've shown it in Venice at the film festival, and I think they've put Robert Pattinson in a very difficult situation because obviously when he does press on this, people are going to ask, did you meet Chris Hansen? Did you talk to Chris Hansen? How did you prepare for the role? And he's got to say, well, I never met him. The studio never set that up. That wasn't the goal of the film. And again, I don't have a problem with Robert Pattinson. He's an actor doing his job, and he's been very gracious in his comments about me and my work. But A24, that's a dirty way to conduct business, I think.

What do your attorneys say? Is it legal?

Well, it's, it's because I'm a public figure. They've got some latitude here, and the bar for defamation is very high for a public figure, and you've got to prove certain things. Now, is there intellectual property here? Is there an issue there? Possibly. Do you argue the identity theft issue? Maybe. It's certainly not ethical. And maybe it's a test case to go before a jury someday. Maybe you have to make it. I mean, I'm in no rush. And again, I can't do it till I see the movie, although I have a pretty good idea of what it is and what have— I've talked to people who've seen it. But why do you not bring somebody in early in the process? And eliminate the issue. You do it because you don't want reality seeping into your dark vision of what you're doing, and yet you want to use the person's real name, image, and likeness for commercial value. So they want the best of both worlds. They don't want me telling them I don't like this or that's not true because they don't want to know the truth. The easiest way not to know the truth. is to not seek the truth.

And that's the path they've chosen. And there's no other way to look at it. They never came to me. I heard it on the street. I heard it through other people in the industry. They came to me the day before they released the partial trailer. The day before. Here you go. I hope you like it.

Wow. Wow.

So, you know, we will use it to the best of our ability to promote our work. And that is why—

If they get away with this, then they can just do it to anybody.

They can do it to anybody. But, but in the meantime—

Which is what they want, I'm sure.

Right. In the meantime, As fucking— it all gets sorted out.

I fucking hate Hollywood.

Well, and this is why people hate Hollywood. Who does that to, to somebody like me?

Hollywood.

Hollywood. And so that's why we've gone out to purchase 30-second ads that will air in 3,500 screens across America prior to this movie being shown in theaters, the last thing people will see is our commercial with me walking into a kitchen telling everybody in the theater to have a seat, to have a seat right over there, and reminding them that this work continues on my streamer, True Blue. Watch trueblue.com. So you take advantage of it as much as you can. You try to see the good in it. And you try to use that to your advantage. And that's what we're doing. It serves no purpose to get angry. I've seen some headlines, Hansen's furious, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've never said I was furious. I said I'm disappointed that somebody would treat me that way. I'm shocked at the utter disrespect they've shown. Uh, I can't find a rational reason why they would conduct themselves this way, except they just don't care about the truth. They're greedy. They want it all. Their own made-up story, but to use my name.

Man, that makes me angry. I wish you the best of luck.

It's gonna be fine. It's a movie.

Whatever.

It'll be over in 15 minutes. But, but you do have to consider a couple things here. I mean, do you make a legal stand so it doesn't happen to anybody else? Do you— I think you minimally do what we've done, which is buy the ads in the theaters. I think we control the messaging. I mean, they're flummoxed by the way I've handled it because they didn't expect it. I think they expected, oh my God, they're going to portray me in a movie even though it's not flattering. And oh, well, I'm famous. I've been on TV for 45 years. I don't get flattered. I don't get awed by Hollywood. I don't think they saw this coming because the day of the screening, I had already been scheduled to go on Fox News on Jesse Watters' show to talk about some of the recent stings and this extortion documentary. And so at the end, obviously, I know that Jesse's going to ask about the movie, and I tell him this whole story about the screening. Go home, make dinner, go to bed. And by midnight, Variety and all— everybody picked up on what happened on the show.

So we've been— we've been, excuse me, you know, setting the pace on the, you know, on the press on this thing. And I think they look terrible. And I think they should look terrible. And the lawyers I've consulted think they look terrible. And we'll make a decision down the road as to whether or not we'll take further legal action. Not ruling it out. And I've got some of the sharpest guys in this part of the legal world ready to go should I pull the trigger.

Well, I hope you take all the profits.

Yeah.

Because that's all they care about.

That's all they care about.

That's all they care about is money.

But it, you know, at some point it becomes dirty money, right? And I've not heard one word Of them saying, well, you know, we recognize what a problem this is and how many survivors there are out there, you know, any of this stuff. And a portion of the film's proceeds are going to go to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children or the, you know, Child USA or Child Rescue Coalition or the National Center for Victims of Crime, all of which I do work for. You know, this just isn't a TV show to me. It is, but there's more to it than that. You know, I do a lot of advocacy work because I believe in it and I believe in these other organizations. I mean, they're shooting their mouths off about a film in Venice. And, you know, we're in Sacramento holding a news conference, holding lawmakers accountable so they don't pass legislation that restricts the ability of students who are victimized by school employees. to seek legal remedy. I don't have to do that. I do it because I believe in it. I don't get paid to do it. I do it because it's the right thing to do.

And they're in Venice patting each other on the back. This is so dark. Robert gets into a really strange space, and it's a real bizarre, crazy creative interpretation of something that happened in real life. And my understanding is that the climax is a guy who gets caught in the investigation kills himself. Now, that happened in real life in Texas. There was an assistant district attorney who didn't show up in the sting house, but he was chatting with 2 different decoys posing as 13-year-old boys. Sexually explicit. Assistant district attorney. So in Texas, that's against the law, as it is in most states. Just the chat with a child, that crosses the threshold. So the local police department makes the decision to go arrest him based upon that evidence. The following day, we are in the street. We want to capture the arrest. They go in to get him. And he chooses to commit suicide rather than face the consequences. Turns out— and we reported this on NBC at the time. The next day I was on the Today Show, reported just as it happened. Nobody wants to see that happen, but it wasn't us running the ship.

It was the police department made a decision based upon what they thought was right to go arrest this guy. Apparently concerned about the destruction of evidence, finding out later that there was child porn on the computer that he had. So that's going to be in there. And again, he's the one who made that decision to take his life. Mm-hmm. But they'll twist that somehow, is my, my feeling. And, and I'll find out when I go see the movie, when I pay whatever the ticket price is for movies these days. Man, let that sink in for a minute.

What a disgusting industry. We're all getting older. And that's not the problem. The problem is when your body starts keeping you from doing the things you still want to do. Like taking the best shit of your entire life. Training, traveling, long days, workouts, recovery. It adds up. And at a certain point, you start feeling it more. Sore joints, slower recovery, knees that don't feel the way they used to. That's why I take Bubz Naturals Collagen Peptides. Bubz has been a longtime partner of the show, and there's a reason I trust them. It's simple. It works into my routine, and it's a product I actually use. One scoop in my tea every morning. It blends in completely. No taste, no grit, nothing complicated. And that's what I like about it. It's easy to stay consistent with, and consistency is the point. I've been taking it for a while now, and I genuinely notice the difference. My knees feel stronger, my skin looks better, I bounce back faster after workouts, and I enjoy every single shit that I take. Part of why I trust Bubz is how seriously they take the product. Their collagen is NSF certified for sport, sourced from grass-fed cattle, clean, tested, and exactly what they say it is.

And there's more to this brand than the product. Bubz was founded in honor of Navy SEAL Glenn Bub Doherty. 10% of profits go straight to helping veterans transition into civilian life. So when you buy this, you're not just supporting your joints and recovery, you're backing the people who served. Ready to upgrade your life? Head to bubznaturals.com/SRS and use code Sean for 20% off.

How about your network, True Blue? It's the greatest thing I ever got involved in. I had met Sean Reck, my business partner there, and we've got a whole team and great people. And should try to name them all, I'll forget somebody important, but it's a streaming network. Sean had done a documentary, a film called White Boy, about the White Boy Rick case in Detroit. Remember, it was the teenager who went undercover for the FBI and then became a cocaine dealer in his own right. Huge story. Story I broke as a young reporter in Detroit. So he does a documentary on it, becomes very successful, ends up on Netflix. But he had interviewed me for that documentary, for that film, and we stayed in touch and we decided we would start this streamer called True Blue and that we would do Takedown on it as well as other documentaries and crime-related programming. And so 4 years ago on Thanksgiving Day, we launched it, and it's been a great success. And the beauty of it is, and you understand this, we own the content, we own the distribution of the content. We have a relationship with a major network and Fox where we go talk about what we do and we make a version of our content for them.

And it's liberating as somebody who has been in the business so long to maintain relevance, but to also have your own place to showcase your work. And it's tied into the 2 podcasts. It's tied into all the social media. I got to be the only 67-year-old guy in America who's got 1.1 million TikTok followers. I mean, I'll take it, but it's because of the pop culture status of some of this work. We have people who follow it who are 13, 14, and 15 years old. And sometimes parents say, you got to watch this because this is dangerous, this situation. And we have 75-year-olds who've been watching it since the very beginning. And I'm blessed to have this kind of a platform, these multiple platforms. And it's really rewarding to me to have been doing something for so long and to be in the game at this level, creating the content that I think is important and that viewers do too. Well, I mean, you're also—

I believe you're also making a documentary called I Am Chris Hansen, correct?

Well, that's something that was in the works even before we knew about the movie. Is that going to be on True Blue? It will probably be elsewhere first, but ultimately on True Blue. So literally, as you and I are sitting here, On this day, they are doing the sound mixing for the final cut of I Am Chris Hansen. And it's a deep dive from the beginning of my career through Predator into what we're doing today with a lot of people who've never talked about me or any of my early days. And while I am not a director of this thing, I participated obviously and encouraged others to participate. And so I think the timing on it's going to be very good because as, as people may watch this movie from A24, they will very soon have the chance to see the real story. Mm-hmm. My story.

Maybe a preview needs to be cut and shown before the A24 bullshit garbage.

All that is in the works right now.

Good for you. Good for you.

But I mean, literally, the idea of doing this film, and they came to me with the idea, and I thought, this is great.

A24 isn't producing it, is it?

It'd be a fiction. They wouldn't have reached out to me for an interview.

Yeah, no good.

So yeah, so I'm excited about that. I think that's going to be—

How long has this been in the works?

Before we knew about the film, 2 years almost. And I've done several interviews you know, for it. Um, they've interviewed a lot of people going back 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.

This— and this covers your whole career arc?

Yeah, starting in Lansing, Michigan.

Right on.

Tampa, Detroit, and then the network.

Right on.

Yeah, I was in Detroit for 10 years, and it was a— it was a great place to be a reporter. I mean, it was competitive, not just between the TV guys. But between TV and newspapers, I mean, we went at it. I mean, we were animals. I mean, all, you know, legitimate. When I say animals, we were competitive.

Mm-hmm.

We treated people fairly, of course. But I mean, it was, you know, it was very competitive. And there were great TV reporters at every station. And great, I mean, real characters in print too, at the Free Press and the News. I mean, it was, it was a I mean, everybody thinks that their early days were the heyday of the business or the golden age of whatever, but this was— it was a very special time to be in the city and to cover the kinds of things I was covering. And I was given wide latitude. We did a story. My first foray into hidden camera undercover stuff did not utilize anything we had shot. But in about 1986, we did a series. We set out to do a series on the crack cocaine epidemic in Detroit. And I was at Channel 7 Action News at the time. It was an ABC-owned station. Fantastic. I grew up in Detroit. All I ever wanted to do my whole life was work at Channel 7 Action News. And so we were going on these drug raids. In those days, you could go along if you were a trusted reporter, you could go on the raids.

And we'd go right in the door. It'd be the Ram, the Hellcat, the shotgun, my cameraman, the rest of the narcs, and then me. And in one of these raids, they found a cache of VHS tapes. It was the Chambers Brothers drug gang, and they had been documenting their illegal operation. Wow. themselves on videotapes. And they found these tapes in the drug raid. Money, money, money. We rich. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. 24-karat gold faucets, cars. And I got copies of those tapes. And I sat on them for 18 months until the undercover portion of the investigation was over. That was the deal. And then I wrote a 5-part series that launched in July of '87, I suppose, on Channel 7. And it rocked the town and made national headlines. And it was because we took people inside this family of drug dealers. And I got a taste of national attention. I also got a taste of how important it is to take people inside the story that you're reporting, to take them on this journey of discovery. and let them see things they wouldn't see anywhere else and hear things they wouldn't hear anywhere else.

And it became part of my mantra of reporting. It's something I never forgot. And that's why I've been so focused on this kind of work over the years, this enterprise reporting.

Fascinating. Then that's in the doc.

Yeah.

This is in the doc?

Yeah. And then I ended up over at Channel 4, the NBC station in Detroit, for another 5 years. Did some great work over there and had very supportive management and had the offer to go to NBC in '93 and went.

Where is this going to air?

We don't know yet. We've got 60 potential, from HBO to Netflix. It will ultimately end up on True Blue at some point, but we may structure a situation where it would air on another network first.

Wow. I can't wait to see it.

Yeah, it's good.

I can't wait to see that. It's

good.

Do you still do the— do you still do the To Catch a Predator stuff on—

That's Takedown.

Yeah, Takedown. Excuse me.

So that's— so that's on True Blue. So every single Thursday, another episode of, of Takedown drops. Every Thursday. And it has for 4 years now. And we are working with law enforcement agencies across the country, East Coast to West Coast, north, south. And we are literally a year ahead in production, which is a sad state of affairs. I mean, I keep thinking I'm going to get to do a Southern cooking show one day. I don't see that in my near-term future. But yeah, so it's a streaming network just like Netflix. You've got to watch trublue.com. It's T-R-U-B-L-U-E. And it's all right there in all these episodes of Takedown, all our other documentaries, all the other shows. And we're expanding as we speak and taking on some other talent to help out with some of these, some of these projects.

Good for you.

It's very exciting. It's a thrilling time.

Can you talk about the setup of Takedown?

Sure.

You know, the process for each specific one.

Right. So it varies a little bit from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. If we're in Polk County, Florida, for instance, Sometimes they'll use a hotel setting or different meet points. The arrest will go down and then I'll get a chance to interview the person at a different location. And so— and that's very compelling as well. I mean, we had a guy in our last Polk County investigation. We had the local Santa Claus.

Oh, man.

So imagine this. So I'm in the chat room with all the detectives posing as kids, and I look over a detective's shoulder. I say, that guy looks just like Santa Claus. He has a white beard. I mean, a real beard. White hair. 68 years old. And a detective from the other side of the room says, holy hell, that's Santa. That's the local Santa Claus. He's— he's been in my home. I hired him. My kid sat on his lap. So they start digging around. He had been photographed at a Rotary meeting with the sheriff, Grady Judd, 2 weeks earlier. Now, obviously, nobody knew he was a predator. But he was negotiating with the father to buy the 13-year-old girl or the 14-year-old girl for sex. Very detailed, very graphic. And so he shows up to meet. He's in his red SUV. You know, online he offers himself as Santa. His wife is Mrs. Claus.

What year? I think I saw this.

This was just last year. This was earlier this year.

I think we actually talked about this on the show.

Oh, it made national headlines. So that was our sting. So they take it back. And when I do these interviews, I don't let on everything I know in the first paragraph, first question. And so we get through the whole thing and he says, hey, I've met other people online and other women. My marriage isn't great. I said, this is a teenage girl. I know it was wrong. And I said, but you said this. And I confronted him with that. I said, you know what? Something else. I can't help but think, you look a lot like Santa Claus. He looks across the table at me and he says, I am Santa Claus. So then his poor wife, who doesn't know anything about this, has to put out an email to all their customers because he was in the parade, Polk County, Florida, the whole thing, to say, Santa is regretfully unavailable this year. He's not out yet. They're still holding him, I believe. And at his age, he's facing life. And, and then, like 3 weeks later, his brother gets caught in a Walmart exposing himself to a woman and her young child masturbating in the middle of Walmart.

So his brother, his younger brother. And what the hell happened in that family? I mean, you can't make that up. So that's one setup. And then sometimes we actually have a house, the traditional sting house, and the guy thinks he's coming over there to meet the dad with the children, or the children who are home alone. And we have hidden cameras all around the house. Remote controlled. I have, you know, 3 cameramen with me, a sound man. And he walks in. Many times there's an interaction with the onsite decoy because all these law enforcement agencies have younger looking people on their staff. Sometimes they work as cadets or as young deputies at the jail, and they meet them at the door. And they come in and they have an interaction. Which is very telling because the guy sees the live child, the live teen he's going to exploit. And then at some point, depending on where we are, I either walk in to try to start the interview, get him to take a seat, or law enforcement will take custody of the situation. I'll get to interview him later. You know, in some of these southern states where there are easy carry laws, we have to be very careful about weapons being brought into the environment.

And so if we have any suspicion that he's carrying, law enforcement takes him first. And that doesn't make the interview any less important or any less significant. They're all telling. They're all compelling, disturbing to watch. But it's, you know, you have to go safety first. And we've had, we've had guys with weapons. Nobody's ever drawn on me or drawn on police or made a threatening move with it. But I, I, I, I, it concerns me, obviously, for all the reasons you'd think, but. We had a case in Louisiana, Livingston Parish, and a younger guy came in, and we watch him sit on the couch and try to make a move on the girl. She says no. They continue the conversation. I walk in, sit him down at the table. He's got a backpack, sets a backpack down on the stool next to him. We go through the whole thing, and you could almost have a little empathy for this guy. Young, made a mistake. And then I start to remember in the chat that he talked about making a porn video with a girl. And, you know, that was bad, obviously. And so anyway, I finished the interview.

They searched the backpack. He's got a loaded .38 pistol in the bottom of the backpack. So, Sean, what happens if we're not there and he's alone with a girl and he decides to use his pistol to either force her to do something or possibly to harm her when he thinks she's a liability after a crime is committed. So then you feel a little less sorry for a 21-year-old, you

know? No, I don't feel sorry for him at all. When you're talking about these, these, you know, predators, I mean, most of this conversation you've said that they're posing as another 13-year-old, 14-year-old, 15-year-old, whatever, another teenager, another child, right? And so when you get— I mean, who are they posing as when they're, when they're getting ready to meet? Are they still posing as a child or are they— Are they—

when I say they're posing, I'm talking about the decoys who work with law enforcement. Yeah. Yeah. So they're posing as the children. The guy will sometimes lie and say that they're a lot younger than they are. But in most cases, you know, they'll say, Well, are you okay if I'm a little bit older? And, well, how old? Well, I'm 47, 68, whatever they are. And sometimes they'll, you know, they'll cheat that down lower to make it look less objectionable, even though it's the same crime. Mm-hmm. But the decoy is always, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, except in the case of these scenarios where we had in San Francisco, where it was a 6 and a 13-year-old. Which is just so— I mean, there's no way to get out of that. I mean, it's clear what you were intending to do. A 6-year-old child, 13-year-old brother. I mean, God. And we saw this. We saw this happen in Polk County. A guy showed up and met an undercover detective he thought was the father at a Walmart.

This is Sarasota area, isn't it?

It's Polk County. Polk County is between Tampa and Orlando.

Okay. Sorry, go ahead.

Yeah. And he had it all planned out. Again, like your point earlier, he was married, no kids, but he was married. And his whole fantasy was to walk through Walmart and check out these boys and look at them and pat them and then go back to the dad's house and have sex with them. And they took him down right there. And, you know, I interviewed the guy, he said, well, it's just fantasy. And fantasy was about to become reality had we not been there had this not been a sting.

How many of these people, how many of these people admit to previous—

Some. It's a minority of the guys because they don't want to get in any more trouble than they're already in. But some do. And we've had that happen, even in cases where they haven't been caught. We had a guy in Ohio who was wearing a necklace. It's one of those friendship necklaces where one person has half of the medallion and the other person has the other half. He shows up in Ohio after driving from Illinois to meet a teen girl. And in the course of the interview, he admits to me that he's done this 2 or 3 times before. And with one of the girls, he's still in contact. And in fact, that girl has the other necklace. he's wearing. But you're not going to see that in the A24 movie, are you?

What's the feeling you get when you show up to the— to do the interview, when you see it happening real time? I mean,

why— I'm so focused on the interview and on the The fact that I've got to be— I've got to have some situational awareness. I mean, I— look, we've made this about as safe as it could be, and obviously the edgy nature of it is part of what makes it so compelling and powerful for viewers. But we have a lot of protocol that goes into it. But my feeling is, all right, how am I going to get this guy to talk to me? You know, what's going to be— what do I say first? Do I act disarming to get him to open up? Do I come out and say, what's happening? Or a lot of times I don't know what I'm going to say till I say it. I just take stock of the room, look at him. And the key to this is not to be nervous about dead air. You're allowed to throw a question out there and you can wait. I got nothing but time. And even if there's another predator right behind him, we can stall him until I get finished with this interview. So my job and my goal is to have a constructive interview and get in this guy's head and figure out why he did this.

And to call bullshit when he gives me an excuse about, I was just going to be the Good Samaritan, or I was going to do this, or I mean, I've had guys walk in there and say, I was going to rescue the girl. I was going to take her to a safe place and have a conversation with her parents. I said, why didn't you call the sheriff's department? Why don't you call the police department? Why don't you call Child Family Services? You're chatting with this girl for 2 days, all kinds of sex talk, what you're going to do, what you're going to teach her, what you're going to give her in exchange. Doesn't sound like a Good Samaritan situation to me.

Well, Carlos, we're getting ready to close out the interview. So, I just kind of want to end this with any advice you do have. I mean, we covered some of this, but any advice that you do have for parents?

Again, I think it's the most important thing I can tell people. Is you have to have an open line of communication with your child. And it's got to start very early. And you got to say, look, I don't want to freak you out. I want you to have a fun childhood. I want you to do all this stuff and play all the sports and go to school. But when it comes to online activities and real-life activities, if somebody does something and you're uncomfortable with it and it violates any of the rules we have established in this household, come to me. I'm not going to punish you. I'm not going to blame you for something that a grown-up did, but you got to tell me about it, and together we can fix it. It's like the sextortion conversation. Look, I get that kids may make mistakes. I made mistakes when I was a kid. I'm your parent now, so I'm going to approach this a little differently than Grandma and Grandpa did because I want you to come tell me. I'm not going to punish you. I'm not going to take away the internet. I'm not going to take away your phone.

But we're going to make this environment safe because there are people out there who are going to trick you. And you don't want to be tricked. And I don't want you to be tricked.

And what about those who have already been violated? What do those parents do? 340,000 that we've caught in the past 6 months. You can't even see the United States. It's all red.

Yeah,

all of it.

I think you need to— if you don't have the ability to get to a good therapist, if you don't have the ability to get to law enforcement, you need to create that ability. You need to report what's happened first and foremost, and then you have to work on healing your child. And that's why so many of these groups are so important because it allows parents and victims and survivors a place to go. The National Center for Victims of Crime is a great, a great place to start. You just go look it up online. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Again, it's a great place to go if your child has sent an image of themselves that's being exploited, they have technology and advice on how to get that picture taken down. And report it and go to your local law enforcement. Again, this isn't 20 years ago when we started these investigations. Every law enforcement agency in the United States wants to be a part of this, and they'll do something about it. And if they can't, they'll send you down the road to people who can. But you got to get that child help and you got to intervene as quickly as possible.

Great advice. Well, Chris, I really appreciate you.

I appreciate you and I appreciate everything you do in this space and other spaces and you giving me the platform here with you to talk about this. I truly do appreciate it.

It was an honor.

My honor.

I can't wait to see that documentary.

Oh yeah.

So

I'll send it to you.

All right. Proud of you, Scott Ross. Thank you, man. I appreciate you.

No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.