Cop Accused of Grindr Entrapment After Using Own Pics To Pretend To Be A 15-Year-Old

A Michigan man has been arrested after a 27-year-old undercover police officer allegedly used his own selfies in a child trafficking sting on Grindr.

The officer used photos of his own muscular, visibly adult torso for his profile, and claimed he was representing a 15-year-old. A birthdate was falsified when signing up for the account, as users must be 18 or older, and then used the “ghost mode” feature to hide his age from other users.

Evan Lakatos, 34, messaged the account, and the pair exchanged more than 100 messages over two days before deciding to meet for a hook-up.

The age of consent in Michigan is 16. Lakatos maintains that he thought the profile belonged to an adult.

He was arrested upon his arrival at the hotel, where he was convicted of accosting a child for immoral purposes and communicating via internet to commit a crime. Lakatos spent 71 days in jail and was added to Michigan’s public sex offender registry.

He is now appealing his case on the basis of entrapment.

Speaking to Pride Source, Lakatos said he didn’t give much thought to the multiple conversations he was having on the app.

“I had a very busy job, and this was a disconnected conversation,” he said. “I was answering when I was on a break, on a quick whim when not dealing with employees or customers, just really not paying that much attention.”

Lakatos’ defence is arguing the officer never clearly stated he was underage at any time during more than 20 hours of messaging across Grindr.

The closest he got was in the middle of a conversation when he wrote: “My cousin finally got the room for me I guess you have to be older than 15 to get a room.”

“How rude of them. You have other pics?” Lakatos replied immediately, the allusion to age not registering.

The officer was the first to initiate a meeting, and escalated the sexual content of their conversation writing, “I want the dominant man to tell me what he wants,” and later, “Tell me more daddy.”

Prosecutors are arguing that Lakatos knew the person he was speaking to was underage because the officer used the terms “daddy” and “boy”, despite the fact that they’re both commonplace, gay slang terms.

Although Lakatos asked multiple times for pictures of his potential hook-up’s face, the officer sidetracked him with sexual officers.

He also repeatedly requested the 34-year-old bring alcohol with him to their meeting, which prosecutors are using as evidence he intended to supply a minor with alcohol.

Entrapment commonplace on Grindr

Lakatos’ appellate attorney, Dominica Convertino, said similar operations are taking place “all over the state.”

“Some are multiple counties working together,” she said. “Some are a single county, effectuating their own task force.”

Police are supposed to follow specific protocols for these types of operations, including an explicit statement from the undercover officer that they’re underage, and allowing the suspect to be the first to bring up sex. Neither of these procedures were followed in this case.

Lakatos’ defence team argue police engaged in “reprehensible conduct”, and the inducement of someone to commit a crime who otherwise wouldn’t have. Under Michigan law, these two actions qualify entrapment.

At the sentencing after Lakatos’ first trial, the judge noted that “the undercover agents could have been a little bit more explicit in terms of the age requirement,” and that, “It didn’t help that they had this full-grown male that was very muscular” to represent a 15-year-old.

In a statement to Pride Source, Grindr said: “At Grindr, we are committed to upholding high standards of trust and user safety. Grindr has a strict policy prohibiting impersonation in any form. Any activity involving undercover stings, false identities or deception by third parties is in direct violation of this policy.”

The case follows a concerning rise in falsified Grindr profiles intended to lure gay men in for the purposes of accusing them of pedophilia, or to rob and beat them.

Last week, a 20-year-old from Queensland pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm in company and stealing after meeting someone through a fake Grindr profile.

Other men having been targeted and attacked through the popular hook-up app across Sydney, Canberra, Victoria, and Western Australia in recent years. In May, Victorian police said they had arrested 35 people, mostly teenage boys, for similar offences in an eight month period.