“Excuse me everybody…” a loud voice cuts through the noise of a fast casual chain restaurant in Brooklyn during a busy lunch rush.
What follows isn’t a person trying to sell anything or rob the place, but a real phenomenon of the digital age.
“This guy came here to meet a 15-year-old girl…” bellows the same voice belonging to Austin McComas from Cleveland Predator Patrol as he and his two associates accost a man sitting alone in a booth.
McComas said the man has come to this restaurant with the intent to commit an incredibly serious crime, one the group said is both rampant on the internet and easy to root out.
“We try to make sure that these people understand, like, we're not here to hurt you, you're free to leave, but it would be in your best interest to have a conversation with us because the law enforcement, like law, is going to get involved, 100%.” McComas said.
Old school influence
Cleveland Predator Patrol became active as an organized group in March 2026, using a method that has become widespread across the internet. They “decoy” in chat rooms, pretending to be underage teens. In Ohio, the legal age of consent is 16, so to root out criminals, they usually pretend to be kids between 10 and 15. They make a connection with a target, arrange to meet them in real life and then step out of the shadows to confront them.
If this setup sounds familiar, you may recall “To Catch a Predator.” For several years in the early 2000s, it was one of the hottest shows on television.
That show, which began as a segment on NBC’s “Dateline,” featured journalist Chris Hansen pioneering the predator catching technique and blending journalism, law enforcement and entertainment into something new that continues to fascinate audiences two decades later.
“I had no idea in the beginning that this was going to turn into what it has turned into. A pop culture, iconic form of reporting, form of television,” Hansen said.
The program that Hansen launched 20 years ago is also back in the spotlight in the form of a feature film starring Robert Pattinson as Hansen.
“Primetime,” directed by Lance Oppenheim, primarily dramatizes the events leading up to the cancellation of "To Catch a Predator,” namely the suicide and subsequent lawsuit by the family of one of Hansen’s targets.
The film which had a budget of $15 million performed well, taking in over $50 million at the box office. and is an early favorite for award-season, particularly for Pattinson’s charismatic performance as Hansen,
But Hansen’s influence and the reach of “To Catch a Predator” go far beyond one movie. Shows from “Arrested Development” to “South Park” have spoofed Hansen’s legendary entrances, where he would step into the kitchen or living room of a “bait house” where an unsuspecting potential pedophile had come to meet someone who they thought was a child. Instead they would encounter Hansen and his calm voice offering them something to drink and asking for a conversation.
This M.O. also inspired a new generation in real life including the three men who founded Cleveland Predator Patrol. They even cited Hansen as their “O.G.” in posts on Facebook.
A new breed
Everyone in the patrol has their own reasons why they decided to start doing this. For McComas, who is 26 and has a young daughter himself, he said he was sexually abused as a child.
“What happened to me was done by two of my brothers. So, you know, having the closest people to you do things like that to you. You grow up with no trust for humans,” McComas said.
For Kevin Fisher, the impetus was personal as well. He said he and his mother discovered his stepfather was having illicit conversations with a child over Snapchat in 2020. For Zac Hunley, the third member of the group, he said both of his young children were nearly victimized online by predators.
The group used essentially the same method as Hansen, but unlike their idol, who coordinated with law enforcement before catches, Cleveland Predator Patrol calls the police on their catches after encountering them and shooting social media content with them.
Out on a catch
I spent time with the group while they were decoying and catching an alleged sexual predator in July. McComas texted and then spoke on the phone with the man from Pennsylvania, whom they encountered on a dating app. McComas was pretending to be a 14-year-old boy.
McComas had graphic sexual conversations over the phone and over text with the man, who was interested in driving over two hours to meet someone he apparently believed was an underage teen.
In a moment that seemed to test the boundaries of the charade, the man asked to go on a video call with McComas, to make sure he was indeed talking to a 14-year-old boy. McComas evaded the request and said he would call back.
I asked him what they would do to convince their target now that he was insisting on a video chat. McComas calmly assured me that he would be able to persuade the man without a call.
After a few minutes of texting, the man agreed to meet McComas at a Medina County park.
A couple hours later, the patrol surprised the man as he sat on a park bench.
In a chaotic scene, they surrounded him, pointing multiple phone cameras at him, beginning their process of humiliation and coercion, which their many supporters call justice, and others, content creation. In short order they had the man call contacts on his phone, including his father, cousin and a neighbor, to inform them where he was and why he was there.
“I’m just going to kill myself,” the man said.
The group then marched the man to the parking lot to await police, filming the whole time. When police arrived, he admitted to having child sexual abuse material on his phone, as well as possessing drugs.
“No matter what, we do not condone violence. That is not our mission.” McComas said. “If the child predator goes to jail and something happens to them in there. Hey, it's not on us.”
The group frequently reminded me that they always call police and don’t intend to commit violence in their catches.
Fan favorites
Videos of Cleveland Predator Patrol gained popularity on social media throughout the Spring and Summer, and the celebrity status of three members grew as well, especially McComas, who became the face and voice of the group. While they insisted their motivations were purely justice-based, they did venture into revenue generation, even creating merchandise including t-shirts with McComas’ catch phrase, “Excuse me everybody…”
Chris Hansen’s original run with “To Catch a Predator” was before social media came to have the dominance it now has on daily life. So his fans largely had to wait for the next episode on primetime television to see the content they liked so much.
Not so with the digital vigilantes.
In late July, the group went live on Facebook on their way to a catch at a Walmart in Elyria.
I arrived at expecting to see another confrontation with an alleged sexual predator, but instead was greeted by a scene of over a dozen Predator Patrol fans gathered, hoping to witness a catch firsthand. They were patrolling the store themselves, sometimes accusing men who were by themselves of being the predator.
Among those who had come to the store to witness the catch was a young couple with their baby. As I approached them, they looked at me, pulled out their phones and exclaimed, “It’s him!” as though they thought I was the target.
One 30-year-old woman who didn’t want to give her name, said she lived just a few minutes away and had never heard of the phenomenon of digital vigilantes like Cleveland Predator Patrol but saw their post in her feed and came to see what it was about.
She said she was supportive of the the group's mission, but the suspicions it raised among those who had also gathered made her feel uneasy - particularly the fact that people were suspiciously eyeing every single male they saw.
“I feel people shouldn’t really judge people… but you never know! It’s really f***ed up, You can’t really judge people based on how they look…” she said.
Physical confrontations and worse?
Despite their assurances, by August, the group’s encounters were growing more violent.
“Sometimes, this is just me being completely honest. Sometimes they got it coming to them,” McComas said.
Two catches in August resulted in physical altercations, including a protracted scene where they dragged a man out of a restaurant. The patrol was charged with misdemeanors for disturbing the peace and simple assault. Another catch in Olmsted Falls a week later resulted in felony charges for the patrol.
In a turn of events that mirrors what happened with “To Catch a Predator,” a man in his 70s the group caught at the end of July, died by suicide less than a week later. He had a wife and three adult children.
The group shared a link to the website with his obituary on their Facebook page, leaving it easy for their fans to add comments.
I asked them how they felt about the suicide as they were booked on the misdemeanor charges at the Brooklyn Police Station in August.
They laughed.
“That’s all I got to say about that,” said Fisher.
When interviewed them some weeks later as they faced legal charges in multiple jurisdictions, they were more circumspect in their feelings on the collateral damage their actions might cause.
“Imagine being his family members who didn't do anything wrong and were just living their life and having that happen…” Hunley said, specifically referencing the family of the man who took his own life.
Better to burn out than fade away
By the end of August, the group had disbanded. Under the weight of legal charges, financial strains and infighting, Hunley and Fisher broke off contact with McComas. Hunley accused McComas of secretly profiting off their work, as well as using his fame to coerce women into having sex with him.
Things turned ugly on social media with members of the group posting private conversations and bringing personal details to light.
Hunley and Fisher have stopped catching while their legal cases play out, but both said they want to eventually get back to work, ideally with the backing of law enforcement.
“The goal is we want to get on the same team. Like, how can we do it? How y'all want us to do it? Let us help,” Hunley said.
But that may be easier said than done.
David Frattare is the chief of the Internet Crimes Against Children taskforce in Ohio. ICAC is a federal organization tasked with doing the work a group like Cleveland Predator Patrol has taken on themselves. They also decoy in chat rooms and other digital danger zones, waiting to be approached by sexual predators who believe their officers to be children.
Frattare said the desire to catch sexual predators is understandable, but law enforcement requires an adherence to certain standards.
“The law is clear that an offender has to engage either with a real child or a law enforcement officer posing as a child for there to essentially be a crime,” Frattare said.
That means the people confronted by Cleveland Predator Patrol technically committed no crimes in their chats, or in showing up in person. Despite the explicit conversations they’ve had with decoys.
In the case of ICAC or local police, they can’t initiate conversations with suspects in the same way the patrol does. They have to wait to be approached to avoid entrapping their targets and to maintain the ability to prosecute their cases effectively. That invariably takes much more time than the methods used by digital vigilante groups.
Cleveland Predator Patrol was not bound by these rules, so they could meet a target, perform a catch and post a video all in one day. On some days, they might do more than one.
This contrast between how law enforcement and private groups operate is at the heart of the friction between the two sides. McComas, Hunley and Fisher all decried the lack of effectiveness of ICAC, claiming they only made a handful of arrests per year. Frattare countered, noting the patrol’s methods of public humiliation only make the job of law enforcement harder and put internet predators more on guard. Data from ICAC shows it conducted 9,707 investigations between 2021 and July of 2026 and made 2,156 arrests.
Frattare doesn’t see collaborations with digital vigilante groups in ICAC’s future.
“I take offense to the idea that these guys are catching people. I mean I get what they're trying to do,” Frattare said, “all this is really doing is making our job harder because these guys that they're saying they're catching, the reality is they're just putting them on YouTube or they're putting them on social media and they're shaming them, which again, pushes these offenders underground and makes it harder for us to do, you know, what we're supposed to be doing.”
But he did leave the opening for cooperation in the simple form of contacting the police before any public meetings and social media spectacles occur, rather than after.
The O.G. abides
Chris Hansen said he’s watched all of this unfold with a blend of amusement, horror, pride and, of course, professional interest. He’s still active in the industry he created. After a hiatus when the NBC incarnation of his show went off the air, Hansen returned, first on the internet and now on cable through TruBlu Studios, based in Strongsville.
The most recent incarnation is called “Takedown with Chris Hansen.”
“Here we are more than two decades later, and we're seeing more guys show up than ever before. And I think it's because there are so many platforms today including gaming platforms where adults can approach children for exploitation,” Hansen said.
He’s also keenly aware that Cleveland Predator Patrol is not the only group active in this space. Across the country, officials say the number active in predator catching is truly hard to know.
While Hansen doesn’t want to be too critical of the digital vigilantes who’ve followed his lead, he can’t help but draw clear distinctions.
For one, he said all of the decoying on his catches now is done directly by law enforcement, unlike the scenes in the movie “Primetime.” which dramatized the early days when "To Catch a Predator" was using young actors as decoys.
“I don't want to be a guy who criticizes across the board each and every one of these people. And I understand that I started this,” Hansen said. ”You can't have people beating folks up. You can have Borat going after predators. I mean, you can, if you're Borat, you could do that. But you're gonna face the consequences.”
Hansen is not wild about his depiction in the movie, which he has openly derided. TruBlu Studios has a documentary, scheduled to be released in late November, called “I’m Chris Hansen,” that will counter the narrative of the film. It shows off his current work and spells out his motivation.
“We go after child predators because I can think of no more noble form of journalism than to protect our children,” Hansen said.
