TV legend Chris Hansen has been doing his signature reporting on sting operations aimed at catching adults soliciting minors for sex online under the name The Takedown on the streaming service TruBlu, co-founded by himself, since 2022.
In one of his recent stings in Blount County, Tennessee, a man named Everardo showed up to have sex with who he believed was a 15-year-old girl trafficked by her aunt. He carried $4,000 in cash to pay for the engagement. Thankfully, the girl was actually a decoy set up by the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, who also arrested the suspect on the spot.
However, as per Hansen’s modus operandi, he got to have a conversation with Hansen before being taken into custody by police. He was asked if he was a US citizen, to which he suspiciously replied: ‘I’m fixing my status’. Later, it has been confirmed that the suspect was in the United States illegally. He was also employed by a medical centre in nearby Birmingham, Alabama, as a maintenance man. Everardo is originally from Mexico.
Chris Hansen went on the Fox News show Jesse Waters Primetime to share his recent findings.
Hansen rose to national stardom in 2004 with To Catch a Predator, a segment on the news show Dateline NBC. He teamed up with the civilian watchdog group Perverted Justice to set up fake profiles of underage children on popular social media and chatroom sites at the time, such as MySpace, AOL Chatroom, and Yahoo Chatroom. The decoys would arrange in-person meetings with the would-be predators and lure them to a sting house wired with hidden cameras. Upon arrival, the suspects were confronted by Hansen while being recorded unbeknownst to them. Eventually, Hansen would reveal the operation to the suspect, and the camera crew would also come out in sight.
From the third sting onward, aired in February 2006, local law enforcement started doing parallel investigations with the Dateline crew. As a result, suspects would get arrested on camera after their confrontation with Hansen.
To Catch a Predator was ultimately cancelled in 2007, in large part due to the controversy about one of the predators featured on the show, Assistant District Attorney Bill Conradt, committing suicide as a result of being caught in the investigation.
Hansen, however, went on to habitually revisit his signature gimmick on other platforms in the years since. In 2016 he hosted the segment Hansen vs. Predator on the syndicated television programme Crime Watch Daily. In 2019 he created a video series on his own YouTube channel with the title Have a Seat with Chris Hansen, following the same formula.
He has stayed completely apolitical throughout his years as a star reporter known for his ‘schtick’ of catching paedophiles. Recently, however, he has shown some affiliation with right-wing politics in America.
This has been his third appearance on Jesse Watters’ show on Fox News in eight months. In his latest interview with Watters, he also took the opportunity to criticize the previous US administrations for sending wasteful foreign aid to Mexico, the country of origin of the illegal alien and attempted child predator caught in his latest investigation. Speaking up against wasteful foreign aid is very typical of the current Trump administration. Hansen specifically brought up a payment of $7.5 million from the US government to Mexico to reduce their carbon emissions, and another $10 million sent to help Mexican workers form labour unions.
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