Man convicted of child sex crime by added _ char "Fus Ro Dah" Skyrim username
Brandon Klayme's conviction for child sex crimes was overturned after it was revealed that police mistakenly identified him due to a single-character difference in a username. The investigation had targeted a user with a nearly identical handle on the platform Kik.
Why it matters
This case highlights the dangers of digital misidentification in criminal investigations and the potential for severe judicial errors based on flawed technical evidence.
The error leading to Brandon Klayme's conviction came down to the difference between one underscore — a keyboard symbol used in email addresses or usernames to represent a space — and two, said Nova Scotia's top court in a decision released Thursday.
"If the correct username had been used at the start of the investigation, the subsequent steps in the investigation would not have led to Mr. Klayme," wrote the three-member appeal panel.
Halifax Regional Police arrested Klayme in February 2020 in relation to an investigation by police in Wisconsin into sexual conversations, video calls and the exchange of intimate images between a 12-year-old girl and a man on the messaging platform Kik.
The man went by the username fus__ro_dah, with two underscores between "fus" and "ro," the decision said.
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