Police Mix Up Usernames, Man Spends 18 Months in Prison for Someone Else's Sex Crimes
· Reason
A Canadian man named Brandon Klayme was wrongfully imprisoned for 18 months after authorities mixed up his Kik username with the username of someone who had committed sex crimes involving a minor. The horrible mistake stems from a mistake first made by Dane County, Wisconsin, police.
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"He should never have been charged, let alone convicted," judges from the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal have now said.
Authorities were looking for someone going by fus__ro_dah, after that account used the chat app Kik to exchange sexually explicit messages and images with a 12-year-old girl whom the court refers to as C.H.
Klayme's username on Kik was fus_ro_dah—with just one underscore between "fus" and "ro," not two.
It might sound odd to non-nerds that two people would have variations on such an unusual username. But "both names come from the dragon language in the role-playing console game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and roughly translate to force, balance and push," notes Neil Vigdor at The New York Times.
The investigation into Klayme's account began with the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin. The criminal Kik messages that police there obtained show that they were sent by fus__ro_dah, with a double underscore in the first part. But when police subpoenaed Kik for account information, they said they were investigating fus_ro_dah, with a single underscore. This ended up leading authorities to Klayme's email address and eventually his identity.
The matter wound up being referred to the Halifax Regional Police in Nova Scotia, where authorities there also failed to notice the usernames discrepancy. Halifax police seized Klayme's electronic devices in 2020 and found no material linking him to C.H., nor any evidence that he had used his Kik account at all during the time period in question. Still, they charged him with possession of child pornography, making sexually explicit material available to child, and child luring. Klayme was found guilty at trial and sentenced to 18 months in prison, which he completed.
Klayme was following up his 18-month prison sentence with 18 months of probation when he appealed.
Telling the court that he had not used Kik since 2012, he pointed out that his username was different than the username that had sent the sexually explicit material. "In the latter stages of preparing my appeal arguments, it was discovered that the subpoena contained a subtle mistake that changed the course of my life," Klayme wrote in a May 2026 affidavit to the court. "The police officer did not notice that the perpetrator's Kik username 'fus__ro_dah' contains a double underscore. This discrepancy went completely unnoticed at the trial. It was never brought to the attention of the trial judge."
"We couldn't figure out how Mr. Klayme's account came into it," lawyer Zeb Brown told the Times. "So we were taking a closer look at the trial evidence and the discrepancy was readily apparent in the printouts of the social media messages."
Klayme is now "exploring his options and getting advice in regard to seeking damages in a civil lawsuit," Brown said.
In July, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal acquitted Klayme of all charges. "The Wisconsin police identified Mr. Klayme as the offender using an incorrect username. His conviction rested on the internet username being attributed to him," the court pointed out in its decision. "Klayme is factually innocent of the offences."
In the News
Social-media age verification is coming to New York: The state has released its rules for implementing 2024's Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Ac, which "requires social media companies to restrict algorithmically personalized content feeds and overnight notifications for minors unless they obtain parental consent," reports Mid-Hudson News:
The final rules outline how companies must verify users' ages and obtain parental approval before enabling those features and will take effect on January 25, 2027….
The regulations establish standards for age verification while requiring companies to minimize the personal information they collect. Platforms may verify age using methods such as uploaded photos or videos or by confirming information tied to an email address or phone number. Companies must also offer at least one option that does not require a government-issued ID.
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