A new Chris Hansen
If you watched Dateline NBC in the early 2000s, you will likely remember a show called To Catch a Predator. Hosted by Chris Hansen, it featured sting operations in which predators were lured into meeting underage children for sex. Hansen would then step out to confront those men before they were arrested.
the Russian has recently started catching sexual predators Dateline NBC style
That show has since come to an end, but one streamer is bringing the idea back on Kick, which is backed by crypto casino Stake. Vitaly Zdorovetskiy boasts more than 146,000 followers on Kick and often spends his time gambling on blackjack and pulling pranks. However, the Russian has recently started catching sexual predators Dateline NBC style.
In one of his most popular Catching Child Predators videos, Vitaly set fire to a stunt man’s arm in a bid to scare an alleged paedophile. More recently, it’s claimed that the man Vitaly caught meeting an underage girl in his latest video is a famous Hollywood producer.
Holding them to account
Vitaly is known for his stunts, having once masterminded an infamous 2019 Champions League streaking incident. Despite this, he is claiming that the videos involving the predators are very much real and not staged. With the aim of “cleaning up the streets,” he began making the videos at the beginning of this year.
One of Vitaly’s most common forms of punishment for the predators is shaving their hair. In a video posted to X in February, for instance, Vitaly shaved the hair and eyebrows of a supposed paedophile after he spoke to an underage teen:
More recently, Vitaly’s followers claim he may have upset the Hollywood elite by catching an acclaimed movie producer in the act. With fellow influencer Bradley Martyn, Vitaly confronted an elderly man meeting a girl who supposedly informed him she was 15. He claims in the video that her dating profile showed her as 23.
Some have claimed that the man in the video has a striking resemblance to a movie producer responsible for the first Space Jam movie:
The home of controversy
Kick launched in 2022 after Twitch decided to ban unregulated casino gambling. Now, the Stake-backed platform is fast becoming the home of controversial content on the internet – Vitaly is no different.
a bystander knocked out an elderly man that Vitaly was confronting
While many might agree with Vitaly’s intentions, the way in which he achieves those goals has sparked some backlash, especially in terms of his humiliation tactics prior to the arrival of the police. In one instance, a bystander knocked out an elderly man that Vitaly was confronting in one of his videos.
Vitaly confirmed in a later video that he does not condone violence against the predators:
Other controversial stars that have signed with Kick include Adin Ross and Heelmike. The latter was the first content creator to receive a ban from the platform in February last year after engaging in a sex act on-stream.