Vegas Police Arrest YouTuber Banned for Allegedly Trying to Meet 13-Year-Old for Sex

Las Vegas police helped arrest former YouTube personality Bryant Moreland, better known online as EDP445, on Wednesday, Nov. 4, after California prosecutors revived a years-old investigation into allegations that he attempted to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex.

The Kern County District Attorney’s Office said Moreland (full name Bryant Turhanemmerson Moreland), 35, was taken into custody in Las Vegas with assistance from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and will be extradited to Kern County to face felony charges.

Prosecutors filed four counts on Nov. 2, including attempt to commit lewd acts upon a child, meeting a minor for lewd purposes, contacting a minor with intent to commit a sexual offense, and distributing or showing pornography to a minor.

The charges stem from an alleged April 17, 2021 incident that became one of the internet’s most widely discussed online predator stings. At the time, Moreland allegedly believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl and traveled to meet her for a sexual encounter. The supposed child was actually an adult decoy involved in a YouTube sting operation.

Despite the public attention generated by the case, prosecutors said they were unable to move forward when they first reviewed the matter in 2021 and 2022.

“The Kern County District Attorney’s Office initially reviewed the incident in 2021 and 2022” but encountered “significant challenges in pursuing prosecution, particularly due to the lack of cooperation from the reporting parties,” the office said in a statement.

The case was reopened after Moreland made statements in a documentary called The Sick Mind of EDP445 that revisited the 2021 controversy. According to prosecutors, those comments constituted new evidence significant enough to warrant another review by the district attorney’s office and the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

Second Look

After examining the new material, prosecutors concluded the evidence met the threshold necessary to file criminal charges.

Among the statements drawing renewed scrutiny was Moreland’s admission during an interview featured in the documentary. Speaking with journalist Chris Hansen—whose long-running predator-sting investigations began with NBC-TV’s To Catch a Predator and continue today with Takedown with Chris Hansen—Moreland acknowledged traveling to meet a person he believed was an underage girl.

“I showed up to that location that day trying to obviously meet up with an underage girl,” Moreland said. “And I guess you can say … trying to have sex.”

Hansen later said the admissions played a critical role in the criminal case, arguing they provided investigators evidence that was unavailable or insufficient during earlier reviews.

No Moreland

Moreland was once one of YouTube’s most recognizable sports personalities, building a substantial following through profanity-filled rants about the Philadelphia Eagles, along with vlogs, gaming content and comedy videos. His channel gained millions of views and spawned numerous internet memes throughout the 2010s.

Following the sting operation, YouTube terminated all his channels, and later attempts to return to the platform were repeatedly removed.

Video circulating on social media after Wednesday’s arrest appeared to show multiple officers detaining Moreland outside a Las Vegas dialysis center, a detail reported by secondary sources including comments attributed to Chris Hansen but not confirmed in the official Kern County District Attorney’s release.