YouTube vigilante from Rochester found guilty on two counts at end of trial – Post Bulletin

ROCHESTER – A Rochester man who posed as a teenager on the Internet in an attempt to catch suspected child molesters has been found guilty on two of the three charges against him.

Chase Taner Johnston, 30, was charged with false imprisonment, stalking and assault following a botched undercover operation in a Rochester apartment on July 23, 2023.

A jury convicted Johnston of stalking and assault and acquitted him of false imprisonment. He was taken into custody Friday afternoon.

Johnston’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 1 at 9 a.m.

According to the criminal complaint, a man called the emergency dispatch center on July 23, 2023, and reported that he was being held against his will and accused of attempting to sleep with a teenage girl.

“In the background, a man and a woman could be heard calling the victim a pedophile,” the complaint states. Johnston and an unidentified woman filmed the man, yelled at him and followed him, the officer wrote in the complaint.

The man told the officer that he met someone on a social networking app and the two talked primarily about smoking marijuana. The person’s profile indicated he was 20 years old, but the person later stated he was 16. An officer who reviewed the messages said they were about marijuana, but the man also sent explicit photos.

An arresting officer found that the conversation between Johnston and the man appeared to be consensual.

When the man reached the apartment, Johnston let him in, then stood outside the door and refused to let the man leave, the man told police.

“He came to the apartment to smoke weed with this kid. I told him I live alone with a roommate because my mother is a meth addict and doesn’t take care of me,” Johnston previously told the Post Bulletin. “Whether legal or not, it was wrong.”

The man tried to get past Johnston and claimed he was pushed. When the man finally got outside, Johnston followed him and stood in front of the man’s car door, the complaint says.

The officer who arrested Johnston told him the RPD had warned him not to do such a thing, Johnston said.

“He basically told me if I keep doing what I’m doing in Rochester, he’s definitely going to find a way to pin something on me,” Johnston said.

The Post Bulletin previously reported that the RPD initially filed charges of false imprisonment and disorderly conduct, according to Amanda Grayson, crime prevention and communications coordinator for the Rochester Police Department. She said the charges would ultimately be in the hands of the district attorney’s office.

“Chase Johnston was reminded that he had been warned multiple times that he would be arrested if he continued to act unlawfully,” Grayson previously wrote in an email.

According to Grayson, the RPD supported 25 investigations related to cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program.

“Rather than following the necessary procedures for such investigations, Mr. Johnston’s vigilante behavior led to his own arrest,” Grayson wrote.

Johnston was previously convicted of fifth-degree domestic violence and assault in 2022.

A video on Johnston’s now-defunct YouTube channel showed Johnston and his friends verbally abusing and threatening a man they accused of trying to solicit sex from a 15-year-old boy. The criminal complaint in that case said Johnston struck the man in the genitals and face.

Johnston was originally charged with fifth-degree sexual abuse, a gross misdemeanor, fifth-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal damage to property, both misdemeanors, but through a plea agreement he was able to obtain a conviction on the lesser charge of assault.