A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months
One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months.
A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise.
Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.
Despite finding no evidence of the crime on his digital devices, Canadian police arrested Klayme in 2020 on child sex abuse charges. He was convicted after a trial in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in prison. He served the full term.
Even after release, Klayme continued to fight his conviction. In the process of preparing his appeal, the username mistake that led to all these years of disruption was finally discovered. On Thursday, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned Klayme’s conviction, writing: “Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences. He should never have been charged, let alone convicted.”
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He should sue the Hell out of the system for millions. I know a lot of innocent people have gotten huge settlements to make them whole after finding out they were wrongly convicted of the said crimes.
You can’t just tell somebody “Opps, sorry for the mix-up”.
Shows how easy it is to convict anyone, especially an innocent man of a “sex crime”…..life he will never get back ..