SERIALously - 430: Chris Hansen Speaks Out Robert Pattinson Movie, New Sting Operations & A Predator’s Playbook

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Chris Hansen is in the Serialously studio and finally speaking out about the new A24 film depicting one of the most infamous chapters of his career. In this exclusive interview, Chris opens up about his career, the highly anticipated movie starring Robert Pattinson, and what he really thinks about Hollywood telling his story..If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow the show for weekly deep dives into the darkest true crime cases! To watch the video version of this episode, head over to youtube.com/@annieelise. .🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks..🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to both of my weekly true crime series 10 to Life & Serialously with Annie Elise wherever you get your podcasts on the Annie Elise Channel!🍎 Apple Podcasts | Where you can also unlock access to 100+ and growing extra exclusive deep dives.💚 Spotify🔴 YouTube🎙️ All Other Platforms.📸 Follow Annie on Socials Instagram: @_annieeliseTikTok: @_annieeliseSubstack: @annieeliseFacebook: @10toLife.⭐SponsorsHiya Health: Receive 50% off your first order on any of their products when you go to http://hiyahealth.com/ae.David Protein: Head to Walmart today to try a bar or stock up on 4-counts of your favorite flavors, like Blueberry Pie and Salted Peanut, sold exclusively at Walmart.Quince: Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to http://Quince.com/ae. Get free shipping on your order and 265-day returns. Mint Mobile: To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to http://mintmobile.com/AE.Chime Financial: Head to http://CHIME.COM/Serialously..👗 Shop Annie’s Must-Haves! ShopMY: bit.ly/AnnieElise_ShopMy Amazon: bit.ly/AnnieElise_Amazon.🫵🏻 Get Involved or Recommend a CaseAbout Annie: www.annieelise.comFor Business Inquiries: [e-mail]••••••••••••••••••🚨Disclaimers1️⃣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 2️⃣ Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. 3️⃣ The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.

I'm Chris Hansen with Dayline NBC. Do you see how this looks? The just released trailer for prime time. You see how this looks. You see how this looks. Again, you see how this looks, right? You were worried as to whether or not. You guys are filming me.

I feel like I'm being violating you. There was a setup. 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. It is suspicious a. F as well. Yes, it is. You see how this looks, right?

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialessly. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously with me, 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 if I say that out loud,

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 Hanson. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Serialously. Chris Hansen. Well, thank you, Annie. It's a pleasure to be 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. Sure. 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. 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, Beth Page. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but in two and a half days, 17 guys showed up, including a New York City firefighter.

So once we did that, you know, this has evolved, as you can imagine, with technology, with the 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, trying 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're 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 I've 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 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, you know, sheriff's deputies who work 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 the state. Yeah, and we're embedded with them too. Right. Because it has to be that way because 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. 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, 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 how to catch a predator has become a cultural phenomenon. Everybody knows about it or has heard about it or has seen some 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, you know, citizen journalists. I mean, look what YouTube has done for people. Look how many crimes have been solved because of this, you know, 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, you know, 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 in take down. 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 take down? And how are those different? Well, think about this, Annie. In the beginning, we merely had decoys in chat rooms on AOL and Yahoo. Right. I was at the the AOL chat room days.

Right. I was writing ASL in the chat room and I shouldn't have. Exactly. Age section location. Yeah. So that's where we were. Maybe that antiquated platform called MySpace. Yep.

There too. Today, you know, 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. Yes.

And, you know, 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 the danger there. And then these conversations are taken from Bull blocks to Discord, which is, you know, about as dirtied up as you can get.

Yeah. And parents don't understand this. And then it goes to the cell phone. We had, in the Roblox investigation, in one county in Florida, we had a case where a young man was arrested for exploding 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 this is happening in Marion County, Florida, near Ocala, what's happening in the

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. And that's one of the reasons we love hya. Their kids' multivitamin has zero sugar, no gummy additives, and it's packed with essential vitamins and minerals. And the kids actually like taking them, which as a parent, that's half the battle, right? They also have kids' bedtime essentials, which has been great for our nighttime routine. It's not a sleep aid. It's a non-habit-forming chewable with ingredients like

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You guys know I am always looking for easy ways to get more protein in, especially on days when I am running between the studio, meetings, kids, all the things. And lately, like I always do, I reach for my David Protein bar. The macros on these are honestly kind of crazy. even Jeremiah loves them. You're getting 28 grams of protein for only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. And they actually taste really good too. They have this very doughy texture with like little chunks and crisps throughout it. So it doesn't feel like you're forcing down one of those like typical protein bars, you know, like the cardboard ones. And now David is available at Walmart

stores nationwide and on walmart.com, which makes them so much easier to grab. You can even try a single bar for just $2.97. I've been loving now the blueberry. pie and the salted peanut butter, but they have eight flavors total. So don't just take my word for it. Go grab one for yourself. Head to Walmart today to stock up on four counts of your favorite flavors like blueberry pie and like my other one's 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 used, law enforcement decoys used, 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,

Ivy League educated, had 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 they're 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. Right. 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 investors. 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. No, no, no. 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 Take-Down 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, you know, 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, you know, look, I can get aggressive with them, right, verbally. But it's not like I'm going to jump across the table and beat the ass.

You know, that's not part of the program. I'd bail 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 on the interview. 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 Stinghouse 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'm not going to talk without a lawyer. Well, 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 of CSAM. Child pornography, all cataloged, all organized on his computer. So now he has to face charges than that. 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 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 the child. Oh, yeah. I was going to tell them. Yeah, that's what the teacher and the deacon teacher and the little league coached. 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 that 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 while you get something that's, that, you know, you didn't expect. What's the wildest thing you've heard? Well, I think the wildest thing is that they were going to just sit with a 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? 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. Yeah, many 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.

And to have somebody sully that by bringing it to a sting house. That gives me a pin 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 Hanson. 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 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 and 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 Stinghouse 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 you in and I said, I 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 your predator ended, of course. And then you transitioned into Take Down

and you have your podcast, as you mentioned. Can you talk to us a little bit about how to catch your 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 the crime. The crime is, in most states, committed with the chat online. 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. Yeah. Right.

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 him. 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 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 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 was 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 is his own episode. Sometimes we combine them them them, thematically. But most of the time, each guy's 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 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. 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. 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 YouTube channels. I mean, we talk about Roblox on the Have a Seed 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.

Why would I be with a network when I had my own network? I have True Blue. And I'm very fortunate and blessed. to have these opportunities. So, you know, we've got, you know, every social media platform, we've got two podcasts, we've got a streaming network of our own, where we produce other documentaries, too. We've got a extortion documentary coming out in a couple 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. 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 just say, 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, 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 journalists?

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 a 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 consumption. And so it'll all shake out.

I mean, you've done very well. Thank you. And you do a great job. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't be here. Thank you. My wife began 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've 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 fooled. 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. 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 Hanson booth everybody who was there. Well, again, 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 and these, and these platforms. They get burned off. You know, the world's a self-cleaning of it, 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 the story that nobody else has tell us. 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, 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. Absolutely. And even though it is people poking fun at you or overly dramatizing what you do in some movie someplace,

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Sure. And I want... And parents cannot be more careful on robots. 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 Day. 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 is stated goal is to... 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 Exploited Children,

NECMECM, as it's supposed to. But too often, I think these companies, and Roblox is right at the top of the list, don't want 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 those in law enforcement, 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, neelistic 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. This guy can deadlift 716 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 Crime Con. Schlep is a young content creator who himself was exploited on Roblox, became an advocate, tried to work with Roblox.

What does Roblox do? Bands him. We're at PrimeCon this last time. We do a panel with the Louisiana Attorney General, lawyer for Schlep. Schlep 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 ban the account. Really? You can go to have a seat with Chris Hansen. I've heard, yes. I heard of this happening. We used that presentation at CrimeCon in our segment, our latest Roblox segment on the Have a Sea with Chris Hanson. 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. But then you dig a little deeper and there are bathroom games and there are bedroom games and games. and games that simulate violent acts that have torn apart our society, mass shootings. 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 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 process looks like?

There's a live chat feature. 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 prohibit. to 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 conference. conversation, sometimes they take them over to Discord, where Roblox has a big presence. And can you explain a little bit about Discord? So Discord is a public sewer, essentially. I mean, they're going to get angry when I say this. But 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 server on Discord. There's a tight relationship there. And then, depending on how the grooming process goes, it goes to the cell phone and texting. And oh, 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 a hold of Chris Hansen's team because I caught my husband grooming a child on Roblox. My wife who monitors, Gabriel 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 started investigating. We find out about it all. We go to Hollywood and interview the woman.

Find the husband. Now at this point, they're separated, heading for a divorce, obviously because of what happened, take him off in the parking lot of his workplace, confront him with the tax. 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, there's nobody 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 Hollandian 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 in the parking lot, predator style,

done the interview with the poor wife, whose life is torn to pieces over this thing. They've got that bunch of kids. So then I said, when are they going to arrest him? Well, I had no time to get to harm. I said, do me if you ever 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 husbands 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 worst halves in in these cases.

Because not everybody is equipped to do that. God bless this woman for doing that. It takes a lot of courage to. sure did. A ton of courage. ...blow up your life in order for the greater good. Right. And now going back to Discord and...

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. It's a combination of chat rooms, Twitch, gaming, all of it all in one. from one platform to the other.

Right. There's all kinds of stuff. 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'm like a helicopter parent looking at every single game, turning off every single chat feature, everything. No friend requests. Know this, know 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. Like, hmm, there's something. There could be some vulnerability there. And they start looking, watching.

If you're putting pictures of your potential model daughter in bidding 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, and, you know, we talked for a minute earlier about the extortion 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 super highway and stuff can happen.

And stuff probably will happen. And you're going to make a dopy 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 know, you got your ass whipped when you got home because you, you did something dopey. the consequences are much more severe today. And so you've 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, gramming 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. You're off to college in a year. Right. 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 for us. But we do, 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 to everything you do, 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, 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. Be yourself. 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-influencer. 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 Brandeels, as I'm sure you've explored as well. Absolutely. 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 going to say that, that the majority of her followers were men, the majority of the people saving her photos

were men of her toddler-aged daughter. And Pampers still went forward saying, we're going to pay you. 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 identify it, examine it, and prosecute these cases.

And the same guys who watch that, the bad cop who had hundreds of images categorized, catalog, 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 CSAM 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, no, no, no, they're going to 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 pedophiles over the years. And she said, all they need 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 brain, 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 their children? Protect your child. Would you put your child in a diaper and let them alone in the park? No. Would you let them crawl around the wall by themselves or an airport by themselves? No. So why would you put them out on the internet version of that? It said, don't do it.

Could it be that important to show them on Instagram and get the likes? Yeah. 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 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 had to 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 sphere of discussion. You don't know. I mean, the Internet is so ubiquitous. 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. From being 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?

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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 well 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 have some sort of consideration

in terms of helping us with this. I haven't seen it. Did you sit in on any of the filming or work as a consultant or anything? So they put together their whole storyline just independently. 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 my suspicion is that they used my name because it helps in a commercial enterprise. And until I see the full movie, you know, 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. Okay. But again, you know, I've been busy being the real Chris Hanson. So I don't have a lot of time to focus on the fake Chris Hanson and the movies. You can't focus on Robert Patton, pause plenty of.

I mean, look, yeah, I know that, you know, he's a very popular actor. I know that 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'm kind of cute. I wonder why they wouldn't have enlisted you to come on board as, I don't know what the exact term would be, 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 want a commercial endeavor to succeed, and they think this is the way it's going to succeed. You know, I didn't get to choose 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 I always thought, you know, I had discussions years ago about I had crafted a script. And I thought Dennis Leary would be a good guy to play me, depending on the age of it all. We are, by the way, just started. We signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster for a Chris Hanson thriller series. Congratulations.

And we're deep into that. So every day I've got to, 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 today? An identity crisis, just the meme with all the numbers going from. existential crisis every morning to figure out where I'm going to be.

Well, you know, I work with a wonderful writing partner named Joe Garner, who produces some of the podcast. And I have such an incredible team. And I got to mention Kelly McLeer, who you know from CrimeCon, who does all the work, the producing work for takedown. But, you know, 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, it's, it's, really a great exercise in creativity to take all the things you set aside, all the ideas, all 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, take down 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 A24 movie. 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 right. to go. So it's, it's a busy, you know, look, it's a great time alive, right? My kids are grown.

Everybody's working. You know, I've got a wonderful wife and I have time to do all this stuff. And so it really opens you up creatively 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 different shows are. Daily show. That's what we need, Chris. Yeah. Well, we may. You know, we may try that one day. Aside from the predator, 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 blow your mind. Can you get 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, you know,

the EBT cards or the certain benefits, they're being abused across a country in this state and 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 going to see on some of this fraud stuff is really just outrageous. You're going to catch a fraudster. Ooh, to catch a fraudster. If you haven't trademarked it yet, you better do it fast. Get the website, get the handles, do everything. Do it all. It's in process. 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 take down predator franchise is very rewarding because we're creating dialogue

and awareness that, you know, 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 going to stand for this. And so we have more law enforcement agencies than ever before wanting 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 work very closely with them. You do. Yeah. I'm just to say everything feels like it's such like

an organic thing that was like aligned so well. No, we love Child Rescue Coalition. In fact, I hosted their event last, this past year in Del Rey. 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. It's shocking. I was chatting with Greg today. When they pulled up that mat for me and you see it just kind of light up like a Christmas Street, 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 feels like such a great partnership. And we've got some stuff going with them too. 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 Take Down Predator Investigative series is.

I think we're up to like 270 episodes so far. Lots 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 that comes out Wednesday. The takedown episodes drop every Thursday, every Thursday. Never a miss. Three brand new pieces of content every week.

The documentaries, extortion'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 they 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, you know, we have a briefing with law enforcement. And, you know, if sometimes law enforcement takes them into custody before I even get a chance to interview them. 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 him first. Now if he gets fidgety or tries to run, he's grabbed. He's handcuffed and then I talked 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. Yeah. We weren't allowed to. So they 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? 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. He had 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. No, I'm good right here. I said, no, and I'm thinking, if he doesn't get into the stool, he's out of the camera shot because he was so short. So he hops up there,

and then we have an interview right there. All those little things that behind the scenes, they're so challenging and darkly humorous. And yes, I mean, the dark humor of it 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. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having us in beautiful Orange County, California. I'm so glad you here. You definitely have to come back once you see the movie and like we have to have a session.

Absolutely. Okay. Thank you so much for us. Done and done. Thank you, Annie.