430: Chris Hansen Breaks Silence on Robert Pattinson Movie, New Sting Operations & A Predator’s Playbook

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Well, I think the violation was going to take place if we weren't here and it was a 15-year-old girl. That's suspicious as f***. It is suspicious AF as well. Yes, it is. Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist League. I'm your host, Annie Elise. I hope you are all having a fantastic start to your week so far, that you are, you know, whatever you're doing, whether you're on your way to work, maybe you're at work, maybe you're cleaning, maybe you're working out, who knows? But whatever you're doing, I hope you are ready for today's episode because this is one that I personally have been looking forward to so much. I didn't even realize that this episode was going to be on my bucket list and that this interview was on my bucket list until I realized it, which kind of, now that I say that out loud, like, makes absolutely no sense. But you may have been seeing the trailer for the upcoming movie, Primetime, going viral right now. It stars Robert Pattinson. He's playing Chris Hansen, who I'm sure all of you are familiar with from back in the day, Dateline NBC, How to Catch a Predator. He now has his show, Takedown, on True Blue, which he is a network he co-founded, and he's just an icon in the space, right? His name is synonymous with catching predators. And so, as I said, you probably have seen this trailer going viral because Robert Pattinson channels Chris's voice, in my opinion, incredibly well. The movie feels like a thriller, but it really takes you through the early days of How to Catch a Predator. What would go into these stings? What was it like for Chris Hansen? And here's the best part about today's episode, guys. We don't need to wonder. We don't need to see the movie to understand what went into these stings, how the stings are still operating today, because today I am joined by the one, the only, the child advocate of the century, Chris Hansen. And he is sharing directly with us. Not only things about the movie, but also what goes into stings, what he's working on now, how parents who are listening can really be educated on the dangers of Roblox, of how predators have evolved over the years from chat rooms on AOL now to video games and to text messaging and Instagram and all of the apps. And we're going to talk all things predators today. So please join me in welcoming Chris Hansen. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Serialistly. Chris Hansen. Well, thank you, Annie. It's a pleasure to be here. I am so happy to have you here. Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. And there is so much that I want to talk to you about. Absolutely. Okay, so I want to talk about the new movie, because obviously Robert Pattinson is going to be starring as you in an upcoming movie called Primetime. How does that feel? Well, I tell you what, I've been so busy being the real Chris Hansen, I haven't had much time to check out the dramatized version. But I'm going to see it soon. And once I do, we'll talk about it. Okay, great. I have a lot of questions about the movie, so we'll get there. I would love to start back, let's rewind a little bit, to the Dateline days, the How to Catch a Predator days, and what goes on inside a sting. Well, inside a sting, there's a lot going on. In the very beginning, you know, in 2004, when we started this, we merely partnered with an online watchdog group called Perverted Justice. So it was their chatters, that group at the time would find these guys and post their identities on their website. And I figured if we could combine their ability to be decoys with our ability to wire a house, it could be compelling. So we set up a house in Long Island, Bethpage. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but in two and a half days, 17 guys showed up. Wow. Including a New York City firefighter. So once we did that, you know, this has evolved, as you can imagine, with technology, with the number of apps and platforms upon which adults can approach children. The whole world has changed in those 22 years. And we have had to change with it. But behind the scenes, a lot goes on. We have a location. We work a little different with each of our law enforcement partners today. We work everywhere from San Francisco, where we were just two weeks before this interview. We were in Maryland last week. And we continue to see shocking cases of men in even more bizarre scenarios than ever before to exploit children. How often would you say, if you could even put a ratio to it, that it's men versus women predators that you catch? Well, I think it's about half and half. Wow. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. I misunderstood your question. We have only caught male predators. We have never had a female predator surface in one of our investigations. I thought you were talking about, you know, men looking for boys versus men looking for girls. That's about half and half. But in terms of female predators, we don't see them. And I think that's at least partially because the shrinks tell us that the female predators seek to know their victims. In other words, you're more likely to see a teacher-student scenario. They don't like the anonymity, where a male predator loves the anonymity of it. You know, likes to figure it out as he goes along, you know. So going back to the early days with one of the stings, after the Long Island sting, once you had the show, How to Catch a Predator, what would the process look like? Can you walk us through that? The process would be to find a location, a home, in the jurisdiction of our law enforcement partner, because it became pretty apparent early on that to not partner with law enforcement until after the fact, which is what we did in the first two, wasn't socially responsible. These guys had to face justice. So that's why we always partner with law enforcement. And that relationship has even gotten closer as the years have gone by. But typically, we find a house, our camera people and tech people wire the house. Hidden cameras, remote. And then the decoys go online, posing as children. When they're approached by a predator, potential predator. If they go over the threshold of a sexual solicitation, a crime occurs online, they're given the address. And if they show up, I confront them, and then they're arrested by authorities. So what role does law enforcement play within that partnership with you? Law enforcement is the investigative arm. Law enforcement is the investigator. Law enforcement has to take this case and the evidence of this case to a prosecutor's office so that they face justice. So now, we have law enforcement decoys, in other words, everybody involved in that part of the investigation, the chatters and everybody else, they're a member of law enforcement. The on-site decoys are young or youngish-looking members of law enforcement, sometimes cadets or sheriff's deputies who work in law enforcement. In the county jail, they look young, but they can pull off the role. The reason we do that is because then there is no chain of custody issues with the evidence. The chats belong to law enforcement. I have access to it, but they belong to law enforcement. And it makes for a much more seamless prosecution. So they're embedded, really, in all aspects of this. Yeah, and we're embedded with them, too. Because it has to be that way because, you know, in the early investigations, there were some guys who were prosecuted after the fact. But we did have guys who just walked away. And those guys didn't face consequences. Now, today, our successful prosecution rate is above 99%. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. And it's because of the way it's set up. Let me ask you this. In the early days, before you did partner with law enforcement more formally on this, did you ever get scared at any of these things? Of like, what if this person— Well, the first one, I mean, we didn't know. Yeah. Right? We could do a little bit of background, but we didn't have their full names. We didn't have a database to run them. So, you know, a guy, Mike, from, you know, wherever, shows up to meet a 13-year-old girl after a sexually charged conversation. I don't know who this guy is. I had security with me. Ronnie Knight, my security guy, many, many years was with me. And so I felt personally protected. I thought the crew would be protected. But it was pretty edgy. Now we've got a full team of law enforcement involved. So it's about as safe as it can possibly be. Well, as you know, I mean, it goes without saying. And I think that's a big part of it. I mean, I think that's a big part of it. I think that's a big part of it. sort of role play of it in some regard. And I've noticed, as I'm sure you have, that a lot of people, there is like a very small group, I should say, on social media who now try to do their own vigilante justice and do these sting operations themselves. And they're not qualified. They're not working with law enforcement. Have you seen any of that? Yeah, I've seen some. So look, I think any time a bad guy is exposed and is stopped before they can hurt a child or stop before they hurt another child, obviously that's a good thing. I worry in some cases that the people they find don't get properly prosecuted because they don't go through the same protocols we do. Now, there's some out there who do. And there are some who work with law enforcement. And there are some successful prosecutions. And I think there is definitely a place in our world for citizen journalists. I mean, look what YouTube has done for people. Look how many crimes they've done. Look how many crimes they've been solved because of this crowdfunding of information, if you will. So there's a place for it. It just worries me that maybe a guy gets caught and doesn't get properly prosecuted. It worries me that sometimes the motives may not be the same as the motives we have working with authorities. But I'm so busy focusing on what we do, I don't really focus much on what other people do. Well, and so speaking of that, you've been doing this now for decades, starting with How to Catch a Predator, now evolving into Takedown. Obviously, things have changed over the years. You mentioned that earlier. Predators are getting more internet savvy, smarter, wiser. There's now so many more methods out there of how they can prey on these victims and exploit them. What was that shift like or that evolution like going from How to Catch a Predator to now Takedown? And how are those different? Well, think about this, Annie. In the beginning, we merely. We merely had decoys in chat rooms on AOL and Yahoo, right? I was of the AOL chat room days. I was writing ASL in the chat room and I shouldn't have been. Exactly. Age, sex, and location. So that's where we were. Maybe that antiquated platform called MySpace. So today, there's been an explosion in the number of platforms, including gaming platforms, where adults can approach children. And so we are seeing cases, more horrifying, more dangerous, more graphic today than ever before. And we just finished not too long ago, our first documentary on Roblox called Dangerous Games. And this is a playground for predators. And parents often don't realize it because they look at a game where the characters appear to be innocent, you know, Lego characters, and they don't realize that they're not. And so they don't realize that they're not. And so they don't realize the danger there. And then these conversations are taken from Roblox to Discord, which is, you know, about as dirtied up as you can get. And parents don't understand this. And then it goes to the cell phone. And we had, in the Roblox investigation, in one county in Florida, we had a case where a young man was arrested for exploiting children all over the country, like a dozen cases. And we had a victim who was 10 years old, who was exploited on Roblox by a predator in the UK. So if you're a predator in the UK, you're going to be arrested for exploiting children all over the But this is happening in Marion County, Florida, near Ocala, what's happening in the rest of the world. And what we found is there is a lot happening. Back to school season is here, which means that we are getting back into routines. And in my house, that includes making sure that the kids are getting the nutrients that they need to actually like help wind down at night and just like, you know, do all of the right things. 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Head to Walmart today to stock up on four counts of your favorite flavors like blueberry pie and like my other one, salted peanut butter. Check out walmart.com to find a store near you. And it's truly shocking. And that's just one example. So we have all these different platforms now every week. I mean, we were on the sting in San Francisco two weeks ago, and they were using platforms I had not heard of. And there are platforms dedicated to adult hookups where children go. Really? Absolutely. Like, what do you mean? Like dating apps? Dating apps, hookup apps. We saw seven men were arrested. In San Francisco, five are currently being charged. The other two cases are under investigation. And one of the scenarios the decoys use, law enforcement decoys use, was a bad dad who wanted to offer up his two sons for sexual exploitation. And we had guys show up, Annie, to exploit a six and a 13-year-old boy, including a man who was a lawyer who managed a multimillion-dollar fund, a child of his own, married to the dean of the San Francisco State Law School. This guy at noon on a weekday shows up at this house in running shorts and a t-shirt to try to exploit these children. And he tells me, I'm broken. Oh, okay. Obviously. But you don't expect people like that to be in these stings. But yet, that's who we find. Last week in Maryland, a Little League coach who had been a tutor at a learning center, who was married to a pharmacist at a major East Coast hospital. We had a guy who was a teacher at a Catholic private school, who was a deacon at a church, and there to meet boys. I mean, this is not stopping. And you would think, and we see people in the chat say, I don't want to meet Chris Hansen, or is this a Sheriff so-and-so's thing? And they show up anyway. Of course they do. Because they think that it's probably never going to happen. What are the odds? To your point, it's these monsters who are hiding in plain sight. In plain sight. And imagine the collateral damage. Imagine the call that that wife gets. And how does she explain it to the children? And then we have access in some of these recent investigations to the jailhouse calls. So you hear the man, the predator, the alleged predator, call the wife and say, oh, well, I sort of made a mistake. Yeah, you made a mistake. Yeah. So over the so many decades that you have been doing this, and I say that respectfully. Not to age you, but you've been at this for decades. I have a question for you. Yes. How do you restrain yourself during these stings when you are hearing the just disgusting things that these predators are after and what they want to do? Because I would imagine that that takes a lot. Well, look, the wonderful thing about the streaming world, the wonderful thing about having your own network, is that we have a little more freedom to express ourselves. Right? This doesn't all have to be packaged into a neat little network segment. Right? If it's worth 12 minutes, we do a 12-minute segment for takedown on True Blue. If it's an hour, we do an hour. And so we get a chance to dig into all these cases in a way that is important in terms of holding this guy accountable, getting justice for potential victims out there, and to taking our viewers inside the mind of a predator, inside the sting operation, inside the cases that are built by these very dedicated law enforcement people across the country. And we're coast to coast now. Every month, a new jurisdiction comes online. We are everywhere. And we continually do this year round. And so my restraint, look, I can get aggressive with them, right, verbally. But it's not like I'm going to jump across the table and beat their ass. That's not part of the program. you out if you did. Yeah, I know. I appreciate that. I think a lot of people would, thankfully. But, you know, I'm so focused on getting inside this guy's head, you know, it's a chess game. How do I get this guy to talk? You know, the lawyer in San Francisco, I want a lawyer, I want a lawyer. Well, that's fine. And that's a fine thing to tell the detectives when they interview you. But this is a different thing here. You can either talk to me and help me understand what happened today, or you cannot. But I'm going to ask all the questions. We had a police lieutenant from D.C. Metro Police Department show up in an investigation a few months back in Maryland. This guy was in charge of dignitary protection for the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department, motorcades of the president, visiting dignitaries. And he spent 30 days online grooming a 15-year-old boy, somebody he thought was a 15-year-old boy. And he showed up, and he didn't come in the house at first. They took him down in the parking lot of the Sting house because, you know, maybe he's got a gun. Maybe he's going to harm himself. He's a cop. He knows what kind of trouble he's in. So by the time he comes in and I talk to him, you know, he gave me the old, I want a lawyer. I'm not going to talk without a lawyer. That's fine. But you're going to listen to my questions for a good 20 minutes. You're the one who showed up here. And guess what? A week prior to this interview, he pleaded guilty to those charges, took five years in prison. And now he's got another case facing him because when they searched his house in another county in Maryland, they found a cache. A cache of CSAM, child pornography, all cataloged, all organized on his computer. So now he has to face charges in that. But he's going to go away for minimum five and then whatever he draws in the other case. How often would you say that during these Sting operations, when you do have that period of time to talk with them before they go with law enforcement, that they actually do share things with you rather than being just, you know, completely shut down? I think 97% of the time they talk to me. And what's the most common thing that you hear from them? I was just here to check on them. Child. Oh, yeah. I was going to tell them. Yeah, that's what the teacher and the deacon teacher and the little league coach told me last week. This is just days ago. Yeah. And we just finished this up. And I was going to tell them that this is wrong. I was online when I was young and I was exposed to this. And I was going to sit with them and tell them it's impossible. It's, you know, how do you expect me to believe that? Right. They've thought of an excuse because they know there's a chance they can get caught. But it's interesting. That they all have the exact same excuse. Like there's no originality with any of them. Yeah. I mean, once in a while you get something that's that, you know, you didn't expect. But what's the wildest thing you've heard? Well, I think the wildest thing is that they were going to just sit with the child and keep them company and wait for the mother to get home and teach them about the evil of their ways. It's like, why didn't you call the police? Right. Why didn't you call 911? Why didn't you call Child Family Services? And are they bringing items with them? Yes. Many times. Yeah. Many times they bring condoms, obviously. They bring alcohol sometimes. They bring weed sometimes. They bring food. You know, we had a guy in northern Michigan brought two Happy Meals. Oh, my God. I mean, what does that say to you? Besides the fact that anybody who's had children remembers what a happy time it was to have the kids in the backseat going on a trip someplace in their car seats and hand back Happy Meals to the kids. That's an innocent passage of life. Yeah. And to have somebody sully that by bringing it to a. A Stinghouse. That gives me a pain in my stomach. It did. Oh, my gosh. And so we go back. You know, I have two podcasts. I've got Predators I've Caught and Have a Seat with Chris Hansen. And so we go back on these cases when there are developments, sentences or whatever. And I did the Happy Meal guy just the other day on the podcast. And just like you, I'm going through this and it did give me a sad feeling in my stomach. Who brings Happy Meals to a Predator sting? This guy did. Evil. Yeah. Is there a particular. Is there a particular sting over the years that stands out to you more than the rest that will stay with you? They all stay with me in one way or another. You know, and look, I'm really good about compartmentalizing this. You know, I lead a normal life. I don't dwell in the darkness. I don't, you know, I do regular guy things with my family. Ski down hills and hit balls with sticks and, you know, escape it, you know, in a lot of different ways. And have maintained what I think is a healthy level of. You know, mind and body. But there are certain things that will always stick with you. And one of them is when a guy brought his four-year-old child with him to a sting house in Fort Myers several years ago. And he wasn't going to involve the child in a sex act, but he was in charge of the child that day. And so he was going to put him off in a room with a video while he exploited another child, a 14-year-old. And we saw him come up the driveway and the whole crew, I mean, these guys have worked with me in some of the darkest places in the world, you know, over seas, undercover, and various investigations, you know. And everybody just gasped. And the guy walks in and I sit down and said, look, you know why you're here. I know why you're here. You brought your son with you and I'm not going to put him through that. So off you go. Some law enforcement people will meet you outside. And they did. And they took the child away. So How to Catch a Predator ended, of course, and then you transitioned into Takedown and you have your podcast, as you mentioned. Can you talk to us a little bit about how How to Catch a Predator ended? Because I think there is that infamous moment. So obviously there was a case in Texas where an assistant district attorney, a prosecutor, was caught online chatting with two different 13-year-old boys. He never showed up. But the police in that case thought there was enough evidence to charge him with a crime. The crime is, in most states, committed with the chat online. They went to go to the police. They went to go arrest him. And as they were arresting him, he decided to take his own life. Later, they found child pornography on his computer. So you can do the math on that. Never want to see it happen, but the police couldn't control it. I certainly couldn't control it. I would have preferred them arrest him at the DA's office the next day. That would have been more dramatic television. But this is what they decided to do. They didn't want him to destroy evidence. So they went to his house arrest room. He chose to do that. Now, we continued doing To Catch a Predator for a long time after that. We did several other investigations. There's this feeling online that that ended the show. We continued the show. I think, and I was there at the time, they made the decision to discontinue the show because it had become very expensive. And they realized that they could do extended versions and Predator Raw on MSNBC and make a lot of money. They could make a lot of money without going out to shoot other investigations. And it had become very expensive because ABC tried to steal the show away. And there was a bidding war for the tech people who worked on the show. And in those days, it still required a lot of specialty work. Today, technology allows us to set these things up a lot easier, less manpower, and certainly not have to cost $600,000 per episode, which is crazy. So I think that had more to do with it than anything else, I'm pretty sure. So the chatter online is more of a misconception. It is. Because we did, you know, after Texas, we went on to do other investigations. And in those days, when we did an investigation, we would go there for however many days, and they would make two hours of television and put different characters in each of those hours. You know, it had to be formatted for a network show. In streaming today, each guy has his own episode. Sometimes we combine them thematically. But most of the time, each guy has his own episode, which allows us to understand who this guy is, what he did, why he did it, if we can find out, and what happens in the case. And so I think it's much more fulfilling, not only from a television production or, you know, storytelling standpoint, it's also more fulfilling to see justice take its course. And in the streaming world, you can do that. Now, we do a lot of versions of these stories for Fox News, and we're talking about doing some stuff with Fox Nation. So we have a network presence, which is important. And we have the independence and the ownership of distribution and content that you need in this new media world. I mean, I've watched this develop over 44 years as a reporter. Yeah. You know, I started in 1981 as a television reporter in Lansing, Michigan. I was still in college. And so to see this go all the way to being 66, you know, it's been fascinating for me. And it's been fulfilling to ride the edge of technology here. You know, I got to be the only guy my age in the world that's got a million point one TikTok followers. I mean, but it's a valuable asset. It's a valuable platform to share information. And the same goes with the, you know, the YouTube channels. I mean, we talk about Roblox on the Have a Seat podcast, you know, we can end up with a million people paying attention to this. And not only is that gratifying from a journalistic business model, it's a million people who see how to protect their children online, which is arguably way more important than anything else. So how have you felt about the evolution of media over the last, even just the last 10 years? Because it has shifted dramatically. I'm even seeing journalists who are on networks, who now are leaving the networks to create their own independent channel. Why would I be with a network when I have my own network? I have True Blue. Yeah. And I'm very fortunate. You're fortunate and blessed to have these opportunities. Yeah. So, you know, we've got, you know, every social media platform, we've got two podcasts. podcast. We've got a streaming network of our own where we produce other documentaries too. We've got a sextortion documentary coming out in a couple of weeks that is just mind boggling and a very important thing for parents to see. We've got other documentaries in the pipeline too. So there's no limit to what we can do. It's really, you know, how many places I can be at the same time, which I'm trying to be as many as I can, including here with you. I appreciate you being here today. So let me ask you this and feel free to be brutally honest as a professional journalist and someone who is so highly respected in the space. And you've been doing this for decades with the evolution of media. How, what's your perception or how does it make you feel when you see other people like myself who don't have a professional background in journalism or anything like that, talking about cases or seeing them spark up and cover different true crime cases or some of these people who I don't agree with are doing these things and they shouldn't be. But like, how does that make you feel given that this is your career? Well, look, I think it's the great democratization of media, right? It's allowed people to have access and it's part of our developing first amendment, right? Everybody has a right to say and do what they think and feel and to share that. And it's up to the consumers out there to decide whether this is worthy of their control. And I think it's a great democratization of media. And so it'll all shake out. I mean, you've done very well, you know, and you do a great job. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't be here. My wife became a fan and then you and I met at CrimeCon and went from there. But, you know, obviously there's some real horrible people out there who are putting crap out there that's not true. And you got to turn it out. I mean, a consumer will figure this out. There's a reason why retail stores go in and out of business. Consumers don't like to be in and out of business. They don't like to be in and out of business. And once they're fooled, you know, those people are done. Once they burn up, they're done. You have a loyal following because you produce content that is meaningful to people and they can relate to you. In your life, at your age, you speak to your demographic. You know, I've been blessed, and I hope you are too, that years down the road, when you're my age, that you continue to have that key demographic. I've been blessed to have that. I've got people who are 15, who follow me, and I got people who are 94 who follow me. And that's why it's important to have a presence on everything from Fox News to True Blue to podcast to TikTok. Catch everybody. Everybody. All the different demographics. Right. Well, and I have to say, at CrimeCon, when you came by the booth, you were the star of the booth. We were going to convert it to the Chris Hansen booth. Everybody who was there to meet me was like, Chris Hansen's here. I think, look, and it goes to your point about, you know, people who are full of shit, you know, and just say whatever they want on these platforms. They get burned off. You know, the world's a self-cleaning oven, right? The crap gets swept off and burned up and swept away. It's done. So people who are sincere, people who have intellectual integrity, people who have energy to go tell a story that nobody else is telling it a way nobody else is telling it will survive in this. And that's what I've done. But I mean, you know, I'd like to be able to sit here and tell you that at your age, I thunk this up, and had a plan to execute it. Well, I had a natural curiosity and a drive and an amount of energy that maybe beat my colleagues. But it's that same drive and curiosity and knowing that what I'm doing, I think is important. And I think people respond to that. It's sincerity. And so, yes, there are parodies and South Park will do something. But to me, that just shows that you've crossed that line into some sort of, you know, recognition. And even though it is people poking fun at you or. Overly dramatizing what you do in some movie someplace, you know, people know how to find the truth. And, you know, it shows that you've done something that's meaningful. After a busy summer, I feel like I'm in like full on get my house together mode. And one of my favorite places to find all those little upgrades that make a space feel so much more elevated is Quince. 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And I want- And parents cannot be more careful on Roblox. I've been saying that for years. And so I am so happy that you're here and you can educate a little bit on that. So obviously, things have shifted drastically since the How to Catch a Predator days. So speaking of Roblox, that is obviously not new, but it's one of the new age technologies from instant messaging or the chat room. Can you explain a little bit to the listeners what Roblox is? Roblox is a multi-level gaming platform upon which anybody from the age of five to 105 can play games and also create games and communities in which you can have these interactions, gaming, many times healthy. And Roblox's stated goal is to create this community where people can engage, creators can engage, and people can learn and have fun and grow. And Roblox has, in response to some of these criticisms, created age verification systems and facial recognition systems. And it does take part in mandatory reporting of inappropriate activity to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, as it's supposed to. But too often, I think these companies, and Roblox is one of them, are trying to take those extra steps. Because extra steps mean limiting engagement. And when you are a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, limiting engagement means limiting profits. And so they have a responsibility to their users and to society in general to make sure the platform is as safe as it can make it. And I don't think, and many experts in this field, including myself, don't think they're doing everything they can. And these victims go back years. In the Dangerous Games documentary, we did two hours, two different parts, and I've got a third on the way because this 764, this insidious, nihilistic hate group is now exploiting Roblox as well. That's a whole other story. But we went back years. I interviewed a 30-year-old man who was in the military, and he was 11, 16 pounds. And he was brought to tears in this interview talking about how he was exploited by a predator at Roblox. We had a woman, in the course of this investigation, you know who Schlepp is, right? You probably met him at CrimeCon. Schlepp is a young content creator who himself was exploited on Roblox, became an advocate, tried to work with Roblox. What does Roblox do? Bans him. We're at CrimeCon this last time. We do a panel with the Louisiana Attorney General, lawyer for Schlepp. Schlepp gets somebody to make an account, and he shows me how to go on Roblox. And we watch as we're approached by a potential predator. Either somebody from Roblox was in that audience or knew what we were doing and banned the account. Live. You can go to have a seat with Chris Hansen. I've heard, yes, I've heard of this happening. We used that presentation at CrimeCon in our our latest Roblox segment on the Heaven see with chris hansen people need to see this yeah it happens live on stage now why is roblox so attractive to predators because it is designed for kids in many ways i look at the characters you know but then you dig a little deeper and there are bathroom games and there are bedroom games and games that simulate violent acts that have torn apart our society mass shootings and and again roblox says it tries to police these things and balance user freedom and privacy with a safe platform but as roblox this why don't you let law enforcement conduct sting operations on your platform absolutely why not why not do that because they wouldn't have as many users exactly well and so just to circle back a little bit again for anyone who's listening who's a parent who doesn't know not only what roblox is but how to use it and how to use it in a safe way and how to use it in a safe way and how to use it how these predators would then attempt to groom their child who's using it can you walk them through like the live chat feature and what that there's a live chat feature there's a friend feature there there have been limits put on some of these features by roblox right but still a kid can go into an area chat that can be approached by an adult unless the parent has absolutely prohibited this and that's why parents need to understand how roblox works because there are ways that parents can make this safer but still there are a lot of common areas on roblox and so if your child is approached and it can be somebody posing as a kid who's not a kid right i tell people all the time just because they say they're 15 years old doesn't mean they're 55 years old sitting in their underwear their mom's basement started by empty pizza boxes you can say whatever you want you don't know that person in real life you don't know that person right so then they have the conversation sometimes they take them over to discord where roblox has a big presence and can you explain a little bit about so discord is a public sewer essentially i mean they're gonna they're gonna get angry when i say this but but it's discord is a widely unregulated space where people can do all kinds of things gaming viewing interactions not particularly well regulated law enforcement would suggest so now they go on there they have more freedom to have a conversation but roblox has a has a server on discord there's a process goes, it goes to the cell phone and texting and all, let's meet up and let's do this and let's do that. We had a case during the early phases of the dangerous games investigation, Roblox investigation, where a woman from Texas reached out on TikTok and said, you know, I'm trying to get ahold of Chris Hansen's team because I caught my husband grooming a child on Roblox. My wife who monitors, Gabrielle monitors the TikTok account very closely, flags me. I said, well, we're going to get on this, track her down, talk to her. We go to Harlingen, Texas, where this takes place. It turns out the wife caught the husband chatting with somebody who was 15 in California and they were clearly inappropriate. He was grooming her. She saw the text, confronted him. Oh, it's nothing. It's nothing. Don't worry about it. You're going to ruin our whole family. Calls the cops. Totally betrayed. The cops start investigating. We find out about it all. We go to Harlingen, interview the woman, find the husband. Now at this point they're separated, heading for divorce, obviously because of what happened. Take him off in the parking lot of his workplace, confront him with the text. I mean, I had the text, his chat with the 15 year old girl. The wife then conducts her own investigation, goes online, right? Like I always say, better than a housewife or a college girl to find stuff online. They'll find it. And gets a hold through her own investigation on social media, Facebook and whatnot. Finds who the girl is. Calls the mother, enlists the mother. She's shocked that this guy was grooming her daughter. They give a full statement to the Harlingen police department. They get a warrant. I get a call saying they're going to arrest him. Now I've already done the interview with him. Took him down to the parking lot, predator style. Done the interview with the poor wife whose life is torn to pieces over this thing. They've got a bunch of kids. So then I said, when are they going to arrest him? Well, I had no time to get to Harlingen. I said, do me a favor, get the video on your cell phone. She gets a video of him being arrested. This whole thing is a segment within the Dangerous Games documentary. Wow. And it was so organic and so powerful that it drove the point home on so many levels. One, law enforcement's got to really be aggressive. Two, you have to advocate your own case as a parent. This woman, made this case against her husband, turned her life upside down financially, emotionally. The husband's family is all upset. She's got to explain this to her kids. And the dirtbag husband gets locked up. Now she's got to figure out how she's going to manage this and put it all back together and work enough jobs to feed her kids and keep them clothed. Fortunately, it's a tight-knit family. And they all pitch in here. Grandma's there and everything else. But I mean, that's a risk. And now you understand from an organic level why sometimes spouses don't turn their worse halves in in these cases. Because not everybody is equipped to do that. And God bless this woman for doing that. It takes a lot of courage to intentionally blow up your life in order to pour the greater good. Right. And now going back to Discord, and I've only been on Discord a little bit here and there in the past, and to your point, it was like a sewer. I was like, get me out of here. I couldn't run away fast enough. But to break it down even more simply for those listening, would you compare, is it fair to compare it to like Discord? It's instant messaging. It's almost as like what AOL chat rooms were back in the day. Right. It's a combination of chat rooms, Twitch, gaming, all of it all in one. So you're pouring them from one platform to the other. Right. There's all kinds of stuff in there. And then ultimately to texting. Yeah. Now there's a lot of other apps. I know because I have a seven-year-old son and he has the Switch and he's doing all this. And I like, I'm like a helicopter parent looking at every single game, turning off every single chat feature, everything. No friend requests, no this, no that. Are there any other apps aside from Roblox and Discord that stick out to you as big red flags? I think they're all potentially dangerous. I mean, we've had cases, horrifying cases that started on Instagram, right? And you think Instagram's safe. What could go wrong there? Well, there are predators just looking, just trolling, saying, hmm, there's something. There could be. There could be some vulnerability there. And they start looking, watching. If you're putting pictures of your potential model daughter in bathing suits up, guess who's going to look at those? And so you have to protect your kids. You have to have an extra layer of common sense and just awareness about it because it is everywhere. And you have to. We talked for a minute earlier about the sextortion stuff going on. And that, to me, I mean, I've sat across too many parents whose children have killed themselves. Good parents, good kids, good homes. Professional people whose children got caught up in a moment they couldn't see their way out of. And it speaks to my mantra, which is you've got to tell kids that you're out here playing on the superhighway and stuff can happen. Yeah. And stuff probably will happen. And you're going to make a dopey childlike mistake. You will because that's what kids do. When I was a kid, that mistake didn't hold the consequences it does today. You got your ass whooped when you got home because you did something dopey. The consequences are much more severe today. And so you got to tell your kids that, look, if you do make a mistake, and there's a likelihood that you may, here are the rules, but if you mess it up, you need to come to me. And I'm not going to beat you up over it. Together, we will solve it. We'll report it, and we'll go to the police department. And it's different now than it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago, not every police department had the wherewithal to go after these cases. Today, they're excited to go after them. They have the technology. They have a cyber squad. They have people dedicated to this cause. And they will, to the best of their ability, investigate these cases. But what you don't want is a 15 or 16-year-old kid who's embarrassed because they sent explicit pictures to somebody they thought was a hot girl who ended up being a Nigerian con artist. And now they're beating this kid up for 50 bucks every day on a gift card to say, oh, my God, my world is over. Kids are so closely aligned with their social media presence. And the thought of an embarrassing picture getting out there, grandma seeing it, it just crushes them. But it's a 30-minute crisis. And even if it does get out there, so what? Who cares? Yeah. Nobody knows. But it feels so much bigger at the time. When you look at people, I'm sure, say critical things about you. They say it about me. Hard to believe because we're good people. It's so hard to believe, Chris. It is. But we're good people who do good stuff, right? We're not evil people. We do a job. It's an important job. And people will nitpick at you anyway. Well, you can't listen to it. You got to be a stoic. You got to think about courage, discipline, wisdom, justice. Those are the things you worry about in life. And you have to apply those things to your life. And you have to apply those to everything you do, or at least I think so. And so if you think about it that way and shut out the noise, and you need to share that with your kids. yeah it doesn't matter that person's on x that person's on here that person's there they're not real they're not real and nobody gives a rat's ass what they say people are so consumed with themselves they don't care about what's happening with you right now you brought up something interesting you had mentioned when people are posting photos or videos of their 15 year old girl in a bathing suit right one of the things that i had touched on and i went into a big deep dive about a year ago on was people posting their children on the internet yeah i'm not a fan yeah and trying to make their children mini influencers if you will and getting this partnerships with pampers with this with that and when you look into it i know how it works with brand deals as i'm sure you've explored as well they want the analytics they want your demographics so there was one woman who showed that when she shared her analytics with a diaper company i'm just gonna say that that the majority of her followers were men the majority of the people saving her photos were men toddler aged daughter and pamper still went forward saying we're going to pay you for that i have never seen c-sam right i've never seen it i never want to see it yeah but i know what it is and i know people whose job it is to to identify it examine it and prosecute these cases and the same guys who watch that the bad cop who had hundreds of images categorized cataloged is the same guy who's looking at that stuff exactly because that's fueling their desire and if you think for one minute there isn't a link between viewing of c-sam and offending then you're not in the real world because there is definitely a link people talk about well they're just looking at something it's not that no no they're gonna offend they will offend without question well it's interesting too i had a forensic psychologist on when we were talking about this and she has worked with so many over the years and she said all they need is one image of c-sam and she said all they need is one image of c-sam and she said all they need is one image of c-sam is one image they make up a voice for them they make up this whole backstory and they're saving these images and with the brand deal with that too it's like they don't care because all they want is the exposure of their product to them it's another click it's another eyeball and so what would your warning be to people listening who are posting protect your child would you put your child in a diaper and let them alone in the park no no would you let them crawl around the mall by themselves or an airport by themselves no so why would you put them out on the internet version of that it's a don't do it it's how could it be that important to to show them on instagram i i i i'm very cautious about posting i mean even though it's my job and i post stuff related to work we post nice vacation photos with our adult children we do a lot of stuff but i i even am careful about locations i don't need everybody knowing where i am at or where my kids are who my kids are you're protecting your family exactly and people need to take that same precaution let me ask you this and it's a dark question and i don't know if you know the answer but what would you say like one out of every x amount of people is a predator that's so hard you know people used to always ask you know how many predators are online at any given time and we got focused on this 50 000 number which means nothing it was just something that was out there in the in the sphere of discussion you don't know i mean the internet is so ubiquitous there i mean i'm sure somebody's got a percentage of humanity who thinks about this and then acts does something evil i don't know but what i do know is every predator we catch forever predator we catch we've saved a child from being if not more children probably multiple from being offended absolutely victimized so okay let's move into the movie of it all most of us picked up a bank years ago and never really looked back right but if you're still dealing with those unnecessary fees it might be time to rethink that and that's where chime comes in chime is changing the way that people bank they're not like traditional old banks who charge fees and gatekeep perks and rewards chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking all with no overdraft fees no monthly fees no minimum balance fees you get five percent cash back on chime card in a category of your choice like gas or groceries and it's just the best so join the millions who are already banking fee-free with america's number one choice for banking head to chime.com serialously that's chime.com serialously sign up now it only takes a few minutes chime is a fintech not bank banking services and chime card provided by chimes bank partners qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits apply go to chime.com disclosures for details because obviously prime time is coming out with robert pattinson starring as you which is crazy to think i would imagine what was it like getting that call not only that they were going to be doing a movie but also that he was going to be playing we had heard you know obviously with all the different properties i have and all the platforms some of the people who are involved in the management also tangentially have relationships in the hollywood world so we had heard that this was in the works a couple months ago they came out and said hey look we're doing this we'd like you to do this we'd like you to do this we'd like you to you know have some sort of you know consideration in terms of helping us with this i haven't seen it you know did you sit in on any of the filming to work as a consultant or anything so they're they put together their whole storyline and then came to me correct okay so i'm going to get a private screening in the next week or so and then i'll be able to tell you whether i like it or don't like it and how dramatized it is and and my suspicion is that they used my name because it helps in a commercial enterprise and until i see the full movie you know i i as a reporter it's sort of silly for me to talk about something that i haven't seen yet so i'm going to see it have you seen the trailer i've seen the trailer what are your thoughts on the trailer it looks dramatic okay it looks very dramatic but again you know i've been busy being the real chris hansen so i don't have a lot of time to focus on the fake chris hansen you can't focus on robert pattinson cosplaying i mean look yeah i look i know that you know he's a very popular actor i know that uh the director is a popular guy but i also have some questions you know what's hollywood's motive here we don't know but i'll find out and i'll promise i'll let you know i want the follow-up i'll do it you know i wonder why they wouldn't have enlisted you to come on board as i don't know what the exact term would be like but kind of like a consultant role as they're filming to be like is this accurate are we having the proper representation of what actually took place in all of these years well we're fit to find out yeah all right so when you got the call not only that they were making the movie but that he was going to be playing you what was that like because he is an a-list star yeah absolutely so you know obviously they they want a commercial endeavor to succeed and they think this is the way it's going to succeed you know i i didn't get to choose my own my own guy here who would you have chosen that's a good question and i knew it was coming and i should have had a better answer prepared for you but um um i always thought you know i had discussions years ago about i had crafted a script um and i thought dennis leary would be a good guy to play me depending on the age of it all um we are by the way just started we signed a two book deal with simon and schuster for a chris hansen thriller series congratulations and uh we're deep into that so every day i gotta is this the book chris hansen who has a different name in the book is this the fake movie chris hansen is this what i've really got to do today who am i who am i today an identity crisis just the meme with all the numbers existential crisis every morning to figure out where i've got well you know i work with a wonderful writing partner named joe garner who produces some of the podcasts and and uh i have such an incredible team and i got to mention kelly mcclear who you know from crime con who does all the work the the producing work for for takedown but um you know it it allows you and i've written a book before i wrote a book about the predator experience 15 16 years ago i suppose but it's um it it's really a great exercise in creativity to take all the things you set aside all the ideas all the the things you wanted to express but didn't have time to in the actual production of the stories and i've got this great you know vault of creative stuff that's just ready to go into these books i'm very excited for it so aside from the books true blue takedown your podcast what else what's next as if you don't have enough on your plate well you know we explore a lot of potential documentaries you know the sextortion for instance there's the i cooperated in the i'm chris hansen documentary which is more of a profile of me that's coming out right around the same time the movie is just after the the uh the a24 movie um and and so i have a lot of topics that interest me you know and so we get to those as we have time but i probably got six or seven other documentaries in the works either shooting or conceptually or you know getting the write-ups ready to go so it's it's it's busy you know look it's a great time alive right my kids are grown everybody's working um you know i've got a wonderful wife and and i have time to do all this stuff and so it really opens you up creatively uh and gives you a great deal of energy to go out and do this and you know i'm a student of the world and i get to write a report about it every thursday and every wednesday and every Monday, every time these-- - Daily show, that's what we need, Chris. - Yeah, well, we may try that one day, but-- - Aside from the predator piece of it and bringing them down, is there anything else like in the crime universe that you're interested in or cases right now that you're following? - So next up is fraud. - Okay. - Waste, mismanagement, theft. I've got some cases that will blow your mind. And we're getting ready-- - Can you give us a teaser? - Well, I think when you talk about systems that are set up in society so that the challenged, economically challenged people get a leg up on the EBT cards or the certain benefits, they're being abused across the country, in this state, in virtually every state. And I've got some people who have been undercover for months on this, who I've been working with, and what you're gonna see on some of this fraud stuff is really just outrageous. - You're gonna be everywhere. - To catch a fraudster. - Ooh, to catch a fraudster. If you haven't trademarked it yet, you better do it fast. - Yeah, I'm on it. - Get the website, get the handle, do everything. - Do it all, it's in process. - You need to do, exactly. Okay, so what out of all these projects that you have going on that you've done, what's been the most rewarding one for you? - Well, they all are rewarding in different ways. I mean, obviously the Takedown Predator franchise is very rewarding because we're creating dialogue and awareness that doesn't exist or doesn't exist at the level it should. We're preventing these guys from harming children. We're, I think in some cases, helping law enforcement to realize we can do this, and we can partner with you, me, and really make something that's compelling and sends a message to the community that we're not gonna stand for this. And so we have more law enforcement agencies than ever before wanting to, to collaborate on these things. - Have you ever worked, or have you ever heard of Child Rescue Coalition? - Yeah. - So I work with them and I have a partnership with them. - I work very closely with them. - You do? - Yeah, yeah. - I was just gonna say, everything feels like it, such like an organic thing that was like aligned so well. - Oh yeah, no, we love Child Rescue Coalition. In fact, I hosted their event last, this past year in Delray. - That's right, with Greg. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I've had Greg on the podcast. - Oh yeah. - And so the technology where you can see the trade of child explicit material in real time is shocking. I was chatting with Greg today. - When they pulled up that map for me. - Yeah. - And you see it just kind of light up like a Christmas tree. It's unbelievable. - I did it on my podcast and we were very involved. We raised a lot of money for them this year. - Oh, fantastic. - Yeah. - That, yeah, that feels like such a great partnership. - Yeah, no, and we've got some stuff going with them too. - Oh, okay. So can you let everybody know where they can find you? - True Blue, T-R-U-B-L-U, watch trueblue.com. That's where the Takedown Predator investigative series is. I think we're up to like 270 episodes so far. - That's a lot. - We're about to binge, guys. - Yeah, so get into it. We've got the podcast, Predators I've Caught, drops every Monday. And Have a Seat with Chris Hansen comes out Wednesday. The Takedown episodes drop every Thursday. Every Thursday, never a miss. Three brand new pieces of content every week. The documentaries, Sextortion's coming out. I'm Chris Hansen's coming out. Fox News, Jesse Waters, we do a lot of work there. And To Catch a Fraudster. - Coming soon. - I don't think I missed anything. - I love that. Well, and I'll put all the links in there. - Yeah, I appreciate that. - Did you ever anticipate that your iconic lines would become as bold as they are where people have shirts made with them now? - No, I never did. And it's funny because the Have a Seat line was basically a way to get control of the environment, especially in the early investigations where we didn't have law enforcement. Now, we have a briefing with law enforcement and sometimes law enforcement takes them into custody before. I even get a chance to interview them. It's in an interview room at a sheriff's office. And that's fine because it's still a very compelling interview. Sometimes they come in and I get a chance to talk to them first. Now, if he gets fidgety or tries to run, he's grabbed, he's handcuffed, and then I talk to him. But in the early days, we didn't have those options. It was either I get him to have a seat or he runs and he's gone. We couldn't chase him. We weren't allowed to. So the Have a Seat, Have a Seat right over there, and the focus on the physicality of the room was critical. And that was my way of controlling the situation. - Well, even thinking back to when I used to watch How to Catch a Predator, like, you know how this looks, or like, what's that in the bag? - Yeah, what do you have in the bag there? Well, it was all developed organically. We had an investigation in Ohio years ago, and a guy came in and he was a bad guy. A court date the following Monday for sexually assaulting a young relative. He was there to assault a girl, and he was a short person, like dwarf. And he worked at a military base. So he comes in, and I said, "You got to hop up and have a seat." And he goes, "No, I'm good right here." I said, "No," and I'm thinking, "If he doesn't get in the stool, he's out of the camera shot," because he was so short. And so he hops up there, and then we have our interview right there. But it's, you know, all those, those little things. Those little things that, behind the scenes, they're so challenging and darkly humorous. And yes, I mean, the dark humor of it is, is part of, I think, the popularity. And so, yeah, I lean into that. Of course I do. - Yeah. Well, I have to tell you, I not only am a fan, but I appreciate so much what you're doing as a parent, as just a human being. Everything, all the work that you do. Thank you so much. - Well, thank you. - And thank you so much for joining me today. - Thank you for having us in beautiful Orange County, California. - I'm so glad you're here. You definitely have to come back once you see the movie, and like, we have to have a two-session. - Yeah, I promise. Absolutely. - Okay. - Yeah. - Thank you so much for this. - Done and done. - Awesome. - Thank you, Annie. - This episode sponsored by She's Birdie. You know that little wave of relief when someone texts, "Made it home safe?" That's exactly the feeling She's Birdie was designed for. The Birdie Disc is a clip-on personal safety light and alarm made for everyday moments where visibility and attention matter most. Night walks, early morning runs, parking garages, college campuses, dog walks, travel. It features bright flashing LED light modes, a built-in flashlight, and a 130 decibel siren that can quickly draw attention if something feels wrong. 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