A vigilante I think would be a good eye view's that word to describe them. I think that would be how he kind of saw himself.

In May of 2022, then 27 year old Chase Johnston was messaging another local man from the Rochester, Minnesota area.

But he wasn't texting as himself.

He was using a made-up persona and posing as a 16 year old boy.

Johnston was masquerading as a teen who was looking for advice on how to come out to his parents.

In other words, he was pretending to be a very vulnerable target.

And like usual, it doesn't take long.

Johnson's conversation with the older man escalated quickly to the point of

arranging a place to meet up. Johnston invited the man to his apartment, but the mark instead

suggested a gas station in the neighboring town. When Johnson arrived on the

scene, he accused the man of soliciting a miner. Things got heated. What happened next blurred the fine line between being

a vigilante hero or a vigilante villain. This is vigilante, an original podcast from podcast one. You're listening to a story told in one

episode called Chase Johnston. Prisoner versus Predator. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin.

In this episode we'll hear about Chase Johnson's efforts to expose sexual predators,

how his mission uncovered a sexual predator hiding in plain sight,

and how the blowback further complicated his own legal troubles. The May 2022 encounter the gas station was just one of many stings that Chase Johnston had set up around his native Rochester, Minnesota.

His emote was to make a profile on an app like Whisper or Grinder,

pose as a young vulnerable teen. Then he would throw out his bait and wait for a mark.

Disturbingly, it never took very long. So basically I set up different accounts on

different websites. Anywhere from dating apps to Friendship apps or anonymous apps like Whisper.

And we post profiles and when guys approach us on on there message us

we tell them that we are you know 13 14 years old 15 years old whatever 15 years old, whatever.

...