The internet can be a scary place for everyone, especially young children. In the latest episode of Luxury Handbag Shopping’s Uncovered, investigative journalist Kristin Thorne talked to Predator Poachers founder Alex Rosen about his work to try to keep kids safe online and in the real world.
The episode began with Thorne explaining what the Predator Poachers do. “These are guys across the country who aren’t waiting for police to track down men who are trying to meet with underage kids online. They’re getting the job done themselves,” she said.
Thorne explained that Predator Poachers puts videos of their confrontations on social media – showing them surprising men who thought they were going to meet with children they connected with online. In most cases, the Predator Poachers pretend to be children online in order to catch the predators in the act.
“I have the utmost respect for people who get out there and sometimes fill the gap where police have sort of fallen off,” Thorne said.
Rosen then joined the episode, where he explained that he was just 19 years old when he founded Predator Poachers. “I was too young to be a police officer in Houston, Texas, where I’m from. So I started to get into these videos online,” he said. “But what really did it for me was seeing regular, non-celebrity people catching predators. Just basically people in their flip flops, shorts, just having a smartphone. Just sticking it in a predator’s face.”
After he grew interested in catching predators, Rosen started creating fake accounts online. Within 30 minutes, he had already met one adult man who “wanted to meet a 15-year-old boy for sex.”
Rosen said he was nervous to confront the first guy he ever met, and he recalled screaming at him and taking a photo of his license plate.
“We started to fine tune how we do this, and now it’s led to arrests in all 50 states and convictions in 43 of them with over 200 convictions,” Rosen said about the success of his organization. “So we’re very, very happy about that.”
Rosen went on to add that it’s not hard to find men online who want to meet up with minors. “I bet you could find probably 100 pedophiles online in a week, and that’s being conservative,” he shared.
However, he did admit that the “hard part is the logistics” of convincing the predators that they’re really talking to minors.
Thorne and Rosen also discussed the police’s reaction to the Predator Poachers’ work. Rosen explained that police use the chat logs they submit with the predators, as well as the footage from the confrontation in order to make arrests.
The conversation concluded with Rosen sharing his hopes for the outcome of Predator Poachers. “My hope is that, you know, criminals are put away and the laws actually enforce how it should be,” he said. “For example, in Texas, online solicitation of a minor, basically them going after a fake decoy account, is up to 20 years in prison.”
Rosen said that they have caught “some people” who were only “sentenced to probation” for trying to have sex with minors. “I got more time for going 100 miles per hour in Virginia. I got 10 days in jail for that,” he said. “I got more time for that than some pedophiles get for having child pornography on their phones, trying to rape a kid.”
