Critical Skyrim Typo Sends Innocent Man To Prison For 18 Months
Innocent Man Spends Over A Year Behind Bars After Critical Skyrim Mix-Up
An innocent man has served the full 18 months of his prison sentence after police made a typo during their child-luring investigation. While looking for a man going by the alias ‘fus__ro_dah’ on the messaging service Kik (a reference to the Unrelenting Force dragon shout from Skyrim), they requested records for the username ‘fus_ro_dah,’ missing a crucial underscore. Unfortunately, this one-character mistake led them to a Canadian man called Brandon Klayme.
Klayme was arrested in 2020 on child sex abuse charges, and was sentenced in 2024 to over a year in prison. As reported by Ars Technica, the investigation began after a Wisconsin mother found an “inappropriate” photo of a man on her 12-year-old daughter's phone, who she had been talking to through Kik. She reported this to the police, who discovered a further 125 messages between the girl and ‘fus__ro_dah’.
The police requested information about 'fus_ro_dah', and Kik provided them with Klayme’s email address. Google records revealed that the incorrectly identified user was based in Canada, so the case was handed over to Halifax Regional Police. They in turn contacted local internet provider Bell Aliant, who connected the IP address to the physical address of Klayme.
The Police Found No Evidence: He Was Arrested Anyway
Police obtained a search warrant for the premises and seized Klayme’s phones and laptops. No evidence relevant to the case was found, and nothing linked him to the girl. The only ‘evidence’ was that he had a Kik account, but police couldn’t prove that he had accessed the service during the period in which ‘fus__ro_dah’ and the girl communicated. Nonetheless, he was arrested and charged with luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication, providing sexually explicit material to a child, and possessing illicit images of a minor.
Klayme continued to profess his innocence even after being released from prison, eventually proving himself not to be the 'fus__ro_dah' who was texting the 12-year-old girl. To hear him explain it, “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. Instead of requesting details for the username ‘fus__ro_dah’, the subpoena requested details for the username ‘fus_ro_dah’. 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.”
The court allowed the appeal and said in response that the evidence “would have identified an individual whose first name is Jay whose IP address appears to be in California,” acquitting Klayme on all charges.