Technology

One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months.

A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise.

Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.

(Ars readers may recognize “fus ro dah” as the Unrelenting Force “dragon shout” from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.)

Despite finding no evidence of the crime on his digital devices, Canadian police arrested Klayme in 2020 on child sex abuse charges. He was convicted after a trial in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in prison. He served the full term.

Even after release, Klayme continued to fight his conviction. In the process of preparing his appeal, the username mistake that led to all these years of disruption was finally discovered. On Thursday, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned Klayme’s conviction, writing: “Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences. He should never have been charged, let alone convicted.” One underscore

The case began in 2018. From August through December of that year, a 12-year-old Wisconsin girl communicated with an adult male through the Kik messaging service. During a check of the girl’s phone, her mother found an “inappropriate” photo of the male and called local police.

The Dane County Sheriff’s Department responded. A deputy took the phone, and the department ran a forensic search on it. The report identified 125 Kik messages between the girl and an adult with the username “fus__ro_dah” (two underscores after “fus”).

To identify this person, the cops contacted Kik, but their subpoena accidentally requested information about the Kik user “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). Kik provided Klayme’s email address in response.

Google records showed that this email address was used to access Google services from an IP address in Canada, so the Dane County investigators turned the case over to Halifax Regional Police. Halifax police took the IP address they had been given to local Internet provider Bell Aliant. Bell connected the IP address to the physical address of their subscriber, Brandon Klayme.

The cops then obtained a search warrant for Klayme’s residence and took phones and laptops from his bedroom. Searching these devices produced no evidence relevant to the case. Nothing linked Klayme to the girl. No intimate images were found. Klayme did have a Kik account, but cops couldn’t even show that he had accessed the service during the period in question.

Still, Klayme was arrested and hit with three charges:

Luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication
Providing sexually explicit material to a child
Possession of child pornography

The case went to trial, where Klayme was found guilty. He then went to prison for 18 months. No one involved, even on the defense side, appears to have noticed the username confusion. The appeal

Klayme continued to press his appeal, but only late in the process did his team figure out what had happened. Here’s how Klayme himself describes the discovery:

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.

After this was pointed out, prosecutors took another look. They agreed that Klayme’s appeal should be allowed. Had the case been properly investigated, the court says now, evidence “would have identified an individual whose first name is Jay whose IP address appears to be in California.”

Given this, the Court of Appeal last week acquitted Klayme on all charges. His sentence (including his ongoing probation) was vacated.

How could such a crucial mistake have been missed for so long? No one seems to know. As the court puts it, “Although the information about the usernames was available at the time of the trial, there is no evidence confirming or explaining how it went unnoticed