Saskatoon man poses as teen girl online, confronts potential sex offender

A Saskatoon man who posed as a 15-year-old girl on the dating website Plenty of Fish has recorded his confrontation with a man who allegedly wanted to meet for sex. 

Chase Karnes arranged to meet a man whom he led to believe would have a sexual encounter with the fake underage girl.

"Within three hours [of the post], I had 150 people contacting me, wanting to meet up, wanting to hook up. All that sort of stuff," Karnes said. 

After a series of messages, Karnes arranged to meet the older man near the Delta Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon.

It's disgusting ... and people look at me wrong and say 'why don't you leave it to the police?' But I got 150 in three hours, and how often do you see them catching someone?- Chase Karnes

"By three in afternoon, I already caught this guy," he said. Karnes filmed the encounter and posted the video to Facebook on Thursday.

On Friday, the company the man in the video works for said it had fired him. 

Saskatoon police investigating

Police say they are aware of the incident and are investigating, but no charges have been laid. 

"We do have an internet child exploitation unit that does these investigations, and I guess the message we'd like to say is that we'd like to leave the investigations to that unit to do," said Const. Bill Bergeron.

Bergeron says police don't want people doing their work. 

"We don't recommend people doing their own investigations. There are safety concerns, that sort of thing," Bergeron said.

Warnings won't stop 'Creep Catcher' 

Karnes knows the trauma that goes with being abused first hand. He said he was was raped as a child and that's his main motivation for what he's doing. 

He discovered a group a couple months ago called "Creep Catcher" that posts videos online. This is the first video he posted and he's vowing to continue seeking out potential sex offenders. 

"It's disgusting ... and people look at me wrong and say 'why don't you leave it to the police?' But I got 150 [responses] in three hours, and how often do you see (police) catching someone?" he said.

"It takes a lot of strength," Karnes said. "You really hold in your anger, your emotions. You're walking up to guys, and you don't know if they have a weapon."

Karnes says even though it's potentially dangerous, he believes it's protecting children. 

"The children are the future of our world. If we don't protect our children, we don't have any future," he said.