A Cincinnati-area man was arrested and is facing multiple child sexual abuse material charges after being confronted by a national predator-catching organization that claims to have helped secure arrests across all 50 states.
31-year-old Benjamin Naylor, of Deer Park, allegedly possessed and distributed child sexual abuse material on his phone, according to Hamilton County court documents.
The arrest came after Alex Rosen’s organization, Predator Poachers, confronted Naylor outside his workplace following online interactions with someone who Naylor allegedly believed was a 13-year-old boy.
“Any site you can think of … we’re on,” Rosen said. “There’s no place, even when it’s quote, unquote, encrypted, that a pedophile can hide from us.”
Online messages
Rosen said the group first encountered Naylor on Reddit.
Naylor allegedly messaged their 13-year-old boy decoy on Reddit before moving the conversation to a messaging platform.
“He wasn’t necessarily illegal with us. He wasn’t like, ‘Let’s meet up and have sex.’ But he was like, ‘Age is just a number.’ Very perverted,” Rosen said. “At some point, he blocked us because there’s a hole in the story that we’re not actually a 13-year-old.”
Despite the blocked communication, Rosen said Naylor’s online activity provided clear indicators of criminal behavior.
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“Looking at his online posts, he was giving many indications he was into child pornography, and just with the terminology he used, where he was lurking online,” Rosen said. “Even if he didn’t message our decoy at all, I still would have gone to confront him, because I knew, based on the signals he was giving online, that he was going to be trading child pornography.”
The confrontation
After learning of Naylor’s location, Rosen said he and his team arrived outside Naylor’s workplace on Dec. 3.
“I go to his building, and I say I have a secret Santa for him,” Rosen said. “And he goes from thinking he’s getting a present to 40 minutes later, being in handcuffs surrounded by five cops.”
Rosen said his interrogation technique can be described as “grooming the groomers,” using psychological manipulation to encourage confessions.
“You basically got to be a salesman when you talk to these people,” Rosen said. “In that time where they’re stunned, you have to sell to them that walking in and just ignoring us is not the best option.”
Rosen said the approach involves making suspects believe they’re victims rather than perpetrators and offering subtle reassurances.
“Getting him at his job, he’s kind of between a rock and a hard place, because he really has nowhere to go,” Rosen said. “As a courtesy, I’m like, ‘Hey, Ben, I’m not here to tell your job about it, man. I just want to get you outside,’ and when someone passes, you kind of lower your voice, because they think in their mind, ‘Okay, well, he’s being quiet when someone walks past.’”
During the 40-minute confrontation, which was streamed live on the Predator Poacher’s Kick account, Naylor admitted to trading child pornography involving “babies and toddlers.”
“When they do admit to things, we do call the cops on them,” Rosen said.
A multi-jurisdictional task force that includes Cincinnati police and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office called the Regional Electronics and Computer Investigations Unit (RECI which investigated Naylor, court records show.
A RECI detective alleged in criminal complaints that Naylor was found with a pornographic image of a young boy on his cell phone. Documents say Naylor possessed two images of child sexual abuse material, as well as possessed and distributed two videos of child sexual abuse material on his personal cell phone.
Naylor worked as a scheduler at Christ Hospital and did not have direct contact with patients. A spokesperson with the Christ Hospital Network told us he was terminated immediately upon learning of his arrest.
“We fully cooperated with law enforcement,” the spokesperson said.
Growing national movement
Rosen, 25, started Predator Poachers in Houston when he was 19 years old. The organization has grown from a group of high school friends to employing over 20 people nationwide.
“Over the course of the past six years, we’ve had arrests in all 50 states, convictions in 43 of those states,” Rosen said. “We have over 260 convictions of pedophiles nationwide.”
The group operates by creating decoy accounts to interact with suspected predators online, then confronting them in person before turning evidence over to law enforcement, according to Rosen.
Rosen said his organization is “an internet watchdog group of concerned citizens” rather than vigilantes.
“We simply report and document crimes,” Rosen said. “We collect evidence lawfully, we interview them lawfully, and we turn it all over, and we wait for the conviction.”
Rosen said Naylor was one of nine people his group confronted during a week-long trip that included stops in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.
“When I tell you that Benjamin Naylor, the guy that we caught, was not even the sickest person we caught that day,” Rosen said.
The day before confronting Naylor, Rosen said the group caught multiple other people throughout the area.
“We’re very busy, unfortunately, and this is our life,” Rosen said.
The organization takes multiple trips across the country each month, typically confronting around 20 people per trip, Rosen said.
“We basically have a map of people across the country,” Rosen said.
Law enforcement’s response
In February, the Clermont County Prosecutor’s Office warned against the independent efforts. Officials said the confrontations can jeopardize law enforcement investigations, put community members at risk and create a situation where the alleged predator could potentially do something deadly when confronted.
Rosen said most law enforcement agencies are supportive of his group’s work, though he acknowledges some criticism about potentially compromising investigations.
“I can guarantee you that no department in the area had Benjamin Naylor on their radar,” Rosen said. “And that’s not to say they’re not doing anything. It’s just that there’s so many pedophiles that you can’t just leave it up to one entity to do it all.”
He said that private citizens can conduct voluntary interviews that law enforcement cannot initiate without probable cause.
“Benjamin Naylor did not get sexual with our decoy account, so that is no probable cause for the cops to arrest him,” Rosen said. “As private citizens, (Predator Poachers) can bypass that and have a voluntary interview with him, and then when he starts confessing to those crimes, that’s when now the cops can get involved.”
What’s next
Naylor was arraigned Tuesday morning. Duing that hearing, prosecutors sought and received a “no bond” order on two of his charges.
He is scheduled to return to court Friday morning for a second bond hearing.
Rosen said his organization has no plans to slow down, with a Christmas trip planned that will target more suspects.
“Many people take Christmas off. I don’t take Christmas off,” Rosen said.
Scripps News Group reached out to the Cincinnati Police Department and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for this story, but did not hear back.
This article was written by Valerie Lyons for the Scripps News Group in Cincinnati.
