SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A San Diego Youtuber says he helped Roseville Police Department arrest a suspected online predator.
Video shows the Youtuber confronting a man who thought he was meeting up with a 14-year-old boy after connecting through a dating app.
“Hanging out with who? Hanging out with who?" the Youtuber who goes by the alias of 'Ghost' said.
"Nobody special," said an older man, who is seen responding on camera.
That’s just the beginning of an hour-long confrontation recorded by Ghost.
He’s a college student in San Diego who doesn’t want to show his face or name so he can keep trying to catch people.
"I want to have a conversation with you or else I can have cops involved," he told the older man in the video.
His organization, called CC Unit, says it is responsible for catching more than 200 accused online predators across the country.
He acts as an underage decoy in online dating apps.
This time around in June, he posed as a 14-year-old boy that wanted to meet up at a Smart and Final grocery store in Roseville.
"He was fine with the age. He sent graphic photos to the boy. He chatted graphically," Ghost, the Founder of CC Unit said. “And then, he was going to pick him up and bring him back to his place and do some graphic stuff with him but instead, he ran into me."
Police say the man seen in the video is 66-year-old Donald McLean.
"I didn’t want to get caught because I knew I was doing something dicey," McLean told Ghost in the video.
He was filming and live streaming the incident, so he wasn’t able to call the police. Usually, his followers do that for him.
“'Please call the police to this location,' and there was like over 1,000 almost 2,000 people watching," Ghost said.
Court records show McLean was arrested on two felony sex offence counts, the first for contacting a minor for lewd behavior and the second for arranging a meeting for lewd acts.
His attorney Martin Jones of Koukol & Associates, Inc. told ABC10, "We have no comment other than our client is presumed innocent until proven guilty."
Roseville police wouldn’t go into detail on this case, and they do not recommend taking these matters into your own hands.
They say, while the Youtuber was able to help make an arrest, it put him in a very risky and potentially dangerous situation.
“The situation was someone who was not extremely confrontational but very likely that it could have gone much much worse, putting that person at risk and that’s our primary concern here," said Rob Baquera, a spokesman for the Roseville Police Department.
Ghost says he is far from a vigilante, and he considers himself to be more of an activist and a journalist, documenting the process and publishing it online.
The suspect pleaded not guilty last month and is expected to be back in court on Wednesday.
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