Was Roblox justified in banning Schlep? The issues with Schlep's predator sting operations
Created by Warm-Shock-6965 on September 9, 2025
Background
This article will explain the many problems of YouTuber Schlep's sting operations against sexual predators, such as comparisons to other predator catching operations, his lack of cooperation with law enforcement, and misrepresentation of where these predators are found. It is not intended to defend Roblox's platform policies or moderation, which are obviously flawed and should be covered separately.
Schlep is well-known Roblox YouTuber known for coordinatiing sting operations to cath pedophiles inside the Roblox community, arranging real-life meetings with alleged predators and calling police to arrest them. Community outcry and protests about Roblox's lack of child safety and it's failure in reporting child predators to police has erupted after the company banned Schlep in August and gave him a Cease and Desist leter for his activities.
Schlep does not find predators or engage in illicit chats on Roblox itself
By his own admission, Schlep does not find predators on Roblox games, he finds them on Discord in servers that are related to Roblox condos — virtual sex games that get reuploaded constantly by bad actors after getting taken down.
Schlep claims that because Roblox allows developers to put Discord server links under their games, this puts them at fault for incidents where users get preyed on by a Discord user in a Roblox-based community. In his videos, Schlep has not shown any examples of malicious Discord servers that Roblox links to, he finds them using Discord’s server search functionality.
Regardless, Schlep continues to use Roblox chats in his thumbnails, but in most of his catches no illicit conversations or actions occur on Roblox itself. Typically, he finds a predator on another platform, invites them to play Roblox, and then criticizes Roblox for not banning them despite there being no evidence of illicit behavior on their platform.
Ironically, some Roblox YouTubers defending Schlep use Discord and host their own communities on it: ‘Parlo’, ‘Gwamgo’, ‘steak’, and others have Discord servers linked in their video descriptions. With Schlep's own logic that they are defending him over, these people are endangering their child audiences by endorsing Discord. This is not a call out to these individuals, but merely trying to highlight baseless the claim really is.
Roblox does not accept external chat logs as evidence because it is difficult to verify and has reiterated this multiple times.
Roblox states in its policies and has reiterated in company statements that it cannot accept external evidence because it is difficult to verify. This is the same approach used by many other platforms, since they cannot reliably confirm that outside evidence actually belongs to the reported user.
“Oftentimes we see reports in the media of somebody saying, ‘Hey, there was this person on Roblox and here’s what they did on another social media platform. Here’s screenshots of what they said in another place.’ We welcome all of those reports. All of those reports help us do a better job. But before we can act, we need to independently verify what we see.
Activity that happens on Roblox, we can verify. We have the logs, we have all kinds of data. But activity that happens on other platforms is problematic. It’s problematic because sometimes that activity on the other platforms isn’t violative of the other platform’s standards. Not only that, oftentimes that is private communication that we don’t have access to.
And people say, ‘Well, look, it’s my screenshot. Why don’t you trust me? I just took the screenshot and I’m sending it to you.’ But I would say, especially in today’s world of generative AI content, you can imagine what might happen if we started acting on evidence that was presented to us and collected on somebody else’s platform. We can’t do that. That would be a significant risk to the community, and a significant risk in particular to the most popular people in the community who end up being targets of this type of activity.”
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CSO Matt Kauffman, Tech Talks EP28
In spite of that, Schlep states that because he recorded chat logs on a mobile device (generally considered much more difficult to fake but not impossible) it justifies Roblox opening an angle of vulnerability and taking him at his word that everything is legit. Schlep on one occasion also sent a folder of evidence, as if physically printing the evidence somehow made it more credible.
Schlep put children on Roblox in a credible amount of danger for YouTube content by inviting predators from other platforms to play games
During a few of his videos Schlep invites a suspected child predator into a Roblox server filled with children from Discord. Because Schlep does not find targets on Roblox, and because the predators do not suggest it, he knowingly placed multiple children in the presence of a suspected predator. Here are some examples.:
His arguments for needing them to play together does make sense, he wants to link a Roblox account to the predator so that Roblox has proof they played together. But he does not need to expose innocent children to a predator to do this, where on other occasions he has done this in private servers.
Schlep has not collaborated with law enforcement on multiple occasions
Schlep claims that because he calls the police to get the predator arrested, he is working with law enforcement. This is a misleading claim; there is no police involvement until after the suspect is already confronted, which is a huge distinction from other predator catchers who cooperate with law enforcement for the investigation and the sting itself — for example Chris Hansen on Takedown.
Here are two instances of Schlep calling law enforcement after the sting is already in progress:
Schlep later corrected himself and stated that he only hands over information to law enforcement — which is blatantly false, you can see him working a sting operation with no law enforcement present.
By not working with law enforcement, vigilantes can potentially interfere with an active investigation and lead the predator to change their behavior or delete evidence, even after being confronted. On some occasions, the predator Schlep is investigating has caught on and blocked the decoy accounts, yet continued their behavior.
Additionally, by not having law enforcement present for sting operations there is an added level of danger if the suspect tries to run, or in one case, drive away. This specific instance by Schlep led to a completely unnecessary police chase where if the suspect had gone onto a busy road, there could have been a danger to the public, which is why the 911 operator sounds concerned about where they are and how many people are around.
Schlep owns a subscription service for his predator catching videos
While not the largest issue, it is worth mentioning Schlep owns and operates the subscription service https://schlep.tv/. Many in the community continue to claim he is doing what he does for solely altruistic reasons, such as child safety or as revenge for his own history on the platform, but this service directly contradicts that claim, since he is clearly profiting from these videos.
The existence of “To Catch a Predator” does not justify Schlep’s behavior
Schlep has recently aligned himself with Chris Hansen, in an attempt to justify his own actions by presenting himself alongside someone who is perceived to be a good actor.
To Catch a Predator ended because of a sting that went incredibly wrong in ‘Murphy, Texas’ that was led by a local police chief who violated protocol by using unnecessary force, did not verify chat log evidence, and lacked both the legal basis and the jurisdiction to operate such a sting in the first place. (Catch and Release: Procedural Unfairness on Primetime Television and the Perceived Legitimacy of the Law Page 532). All 25 charges from catches in Murphy were later dropped. Chris Hansen may have honourable intentions, but many of his stings were completely unnecessary, especially in the Murphy case, and done for reality television not to get child predators off the street. There is a much better Reddit post that discusses more history here. The article for this section surrounding Reality TV predator stings can be read here.
Opinion
So, in conclusion, i say Schlep's ban was valid, because a company can not enable vigilantes. I am not saying Schlep is a bad actor, but a line has to be drawn. It doesn't matter how good his goal is, because you end up with bad actors on both sides.
Reently, as of September 5, 2025, Schlep posted that he had got his first conviction for a Roblox predator. Quick Summary:
- Predator was found on Discord, got caught attempting to message a minor
- Was invited to Roblox BUT in a Private Server, which is safe as there are no other users (this is the one cited in Problem 3)
- Predator co-operated and agreed to a meet up with someone (a decoy) who could help him
- Admitted to possessing CSAM, cops were eventually called
- After about a year, pleaded guilty on posessing CSAM
So while this operation was ultimately good with zero flaws, it is very different from the 2 mishandled operations mentioned in my "Schlep put children on Roblox in a credible amount of danger for YouTube content by inviting predators from other platforms to play games" argument where the predator attempted to meet with a minor, and we still have to wait and see if those lead to convictions.
