Crime

Police Mix Up Usernames, Man Spends 18 Months in Prison for Someone Else's Sex Crimes

"He should never have been charged, let alone convicted," judges now say.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 8.3.2026 11:35 AM

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(Photo: Willeecole/Dreamstime)

A Canadian man named Brandon Klayme was wrongfully imprisoned for 18 months after authorities mixed up his Kik username with the username of someone who had committed sex crimes involving a minor. The horrible mistake stems from a mistake first made by Dane County, Wisconsin, police.

"He should never have been charged, let alone convicted," judges from the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal have now said.

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Authorities were looking for someone going by fus__ro_dah, after that account used the chat app Kik to exchange sexually explicit messages and images with a 12-year-old girl whom the court refers to as C.H.

Klayme's username on Kik was fus_ro_dah—with just one underscore between "fus" and "ro," not two.

It might sound odd to non-nerds that two people would have variations on such an unusual username. But "both names come from the dragon language in the role-playing console game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and roughly translate to force, balance and push," notes Neil Vigdor at The New York Times.

The investigation into Klayme's account began with the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin. The criminal Kik messages that police there obtained show that they were sent by fus__ro_dah, with a double........

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