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Innocent man spends 18 months in prison after Skyrim username mixup - Dexerto
An innocent man spent 18 months behind bars after police missed an underscore in a Skyrim username and identified the wrong person.
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An innocent man spent 18 months behind bars after police missed an underscore in a Skyrim-inspired username and identified the wrong person.
Brandon Klayme, from Halifax, Canada, was convicted following an investigation that began in Wisconsin in 2018. The case centered on a Kik account whose username referenced the iconic "Fus Ro Dah" Dragon Shout from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
However, investigators made a one-character mistake when requesting the account's information from Kik, setting off a chain of events that took years to unravel.
Police confused two Skyrim-inspired usernames
The account police intended to investigate was named "fus__ro_dah," with two underscores after "fus." The subpoena sent to Kik instead listed "fus_ro_dah," which had only one underscore and belonged to Klayme.Kik supplied investigators with information connected to Klayme's account, including his email address. Police then traced him to Nova Scotia, where officers searched his home and seized several phones and laptops in February 2020.
According to Ars Technica, investigators found no evidence connecting Klayme to the underage victim or the conversations at the center of the case. They also could not establish that he had used Kik during the period being investigated.
Despite this, the Skyrim fan was arrested and later convicted on three charges tied to the child-luring case, including providing sexual material to a child and possession of CP. He received an 18-month jail sentence in 2024 and served the entire term.
The error was finally discovered when lawyer Zeb Brown reviewed the original subpoena while preparing Klayme's appeal. Prosecutors subsequently agreed that the appeal should be allowed.
Klayme explained: "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."
On July 23, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned the convictions and acquitted Klayme of every charge.
"Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences," the appeal panel wrote. "He should never have been charged, let alone convicted."
The court said the correct username information had been available during the original trial, but there was no evidence explaining how the crucial extra underscore went unnoticed.
It's unclear if Klayme will be seeking compensation for the 18 months he spent in prison.
