A YouTube personality who attracted an audience with videos about the N.F.L. was arrested on Wednesday in Las Vegas after he made comments about sexual acts with minors in a documentary posted online.
The Kern County District Attorney’s Office in California said in a statement on Wednesday that it had charged the YouTuber, Bryant Turhanemmerson Moreland, with four felonies after an “extensive investigation” into statements Mr. Moreland made in the documentary.
A lawyer for Mr. Moreland, 35, could not immediately be reached.
His arrest was the culmination of a six-year saga that involved vigilante efforts by other YouTubers and includes a cameo by Chris Hansen, the former host of the TV show “To Catch a Predator.”
Mr. Moreland built a following on YouTube with videos where he ranted about the N.F.L. and his favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles. In 2020, another N.F.L. YouTuber accused Mr. Moreland of messaging minors. The authorities reviewed an incident involving Mr. Moreland in 2021, according to the Kern County District Attorney’s Office, but did not bring charges.
Several online vigilantes continued investigating Mr. Moreland, and their efforts are captured in the documentary posted on YouTube on Aug. 9.
The documentary was made by Mike Clum, who has worked in corporate video production for 15 years and said in an interview on Thursday that he spent $200,000 making the film. The revenue from the documentary will go to the nonprofit Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, Mr. Clum said.
In the 1 hour and 34 minute film, Mr. Moreland speaks openly about being the subject of a YouTube vigilante sting orchestrated in 2021 by Alex Rosen, who runs a group called Predator Poachers that seeks to expose child predators. In a video showing the 2021 operation, Mr. Moreland arrives at a location to meet a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl and had been messaging, but is confronted instead by Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Hansen, who inspired YouTube vigilantes like Predator Poachers with his show “To Catch a Predator,” speaks to Mr. Moreland in the documentary about the sting.
Mr. Hansen tells Mr. Moreland: “You were trying to have sex with a 13-year-old girl?” Mr. Moreland responds: “For the most part, yep.”
Later in the documentary, a girl says Mr. Moreland started sending her sexual, and violent, messages when she was 15. When asked about this in the documentary, Mr. Moreland says he sent a video of himself masturbating to the girl.
Mr. Moreland says in the documentary that he is not a pedophile because he is not attracted to girls in elementary and middle school. But he draws a line between those girls, and girls who are 15, 16, 17, “and some 14-year-olds,” calling interactions with them a “two-way street.”
Mr. Moreland makes homophobic and misogynistic remarks throughout the documentary. He also says he has end-stage kidney failure in the film, which includes a confrontation between Mr. Moreland and another online vigilante outside a dialysis center.
Mr. Moreland was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday after the Kern County district attorney filed charges against him on Monday. He is set to be arraigned after being extradited to California.
He is accused of attempt to commit lewd acts upon a child, meeting a minor for lewd purposes, contacting a minor with intent to commit sexual offense and distributing or showing pornography to a minor.
The district attorney’s office said the charges stem from an alleged incident involving a child younger than 14 that took place on April 17, 2021. The office said it reviewed the incident in 2021 and 2022, but faced challenges in pursuing the prosecution “particularly due to the lack of cooperation from the reporting parties.”
The Kern County sheriff’s office and the district attorney’s office said on Wednesday that they had reopened the investigation “in light of recent statements made by Moreland in the documentary,” then found new evidence that met the threshold to file criminal charges.
Mr. Clum said Mr. Moreland’s openness was in part a product of the relationship they built during filming of the documentary, which is titled “The Sick Mind of EDP445,” a reference to Mr. Moreland’s YouTube handle. Mr. Clum said that he made it clear to Mr. Moreland that the documentary would be critical, but also that he had treated Mr. Moreland with respect, something he said the man was not accustomed to.
Mr. Moreland was candid also because YouTubers are more open than most about sharing online without a filter, Mr. Clum said. “This is someone who loves getting attention,” he said.
The sensational and over-the-top tone of the documentary has been criticized online, Mr. Clum said. In one scene, for example, the “Swan Lake” theme plays as Mr. Moreland explains how he came up with his YouTube account name, which was inspired by pornography. It includes a re-enactment.
But Mr. Clum said the film’s style helped draw attention online, achieving his goal to “tell the truth in the most interesting way, while still in the film seriously hitting home the facts of the activity that could have been criminal.”
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