Vigilante ‘pedophile predator catcher’ arrested as police charge popular social media influencer with extortion

A vigilante group of pedophiles has been arrested for allegedly attacking a suspected predator and forcing him to eat cigarette butts under the threat of calling the police if he didn’t comply.

Jay Carnicom, a father with more than a million followers on social media pages dedicated to catching predators, was arrested last week by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida on three counts of racketeering and two counts of assault.

He was booked into the Clay County Jail but has since been released on bond.

Carnicom’s videos, in which he confronts suspected predators and is often seen attacking them, are highly popular on social media and are viewed millions of times.

But the Clay County Sheriff’s Office has warned that while the vigilante videos and others like them online may seem noble, they can actually hinder investigations and make it harder to convict predators.

“We have investigated the allegations regarding the subjects involved in the videos. While we cannot provide details about these investigations, there are a plethora of legal reasons why we cannot file charges in these types of situations,” a Clay County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

“And that’s because of these vigilante actions and methods.”

The spokesperson added that the sheriff’s office “takes these investigations very seriously” and that they have “investigated more than 200 cybertips and made more than 10 arrests” this year.

Jay Carnicom, a vigilante who catches pedophile predators, was arrested in Florida last week for allegedly attacking a suspected predator and forcing him to eat cigarette butts

Carnicom has posted hundreds of videos on social media showing suspected child predators being confronted and attacked. He is pictured grabbing an alleged pedophile in one of his videos, which has been viewed 5.8 million times on Instagram alone

Carnicom could then be seen launching the suspected predator into a fence. The head of investigations at the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said he suspects the motivation for these types of videos is attention and money.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office explained that the process of building probable cause to secure an arrest warrant and developing evidence admissible in court requires following strict legal procedures from day one.

The spokesperson added that adults who pose as children online to lure predators do not meet the criminal threshold and cannot be used as probable cause for an arrest.

“If vigilantes get in the way, it is not only extremely dangerous from a public safety perspective, but it also hinders law enforcement investigations before they can even face justice,” the spokesperson said.

Head of Investigations Domenic Paniccia also questioned to News4JAX the motivation behind the vigilante content, saying in many cases the people in the videos face no legal repercussions or consequences beyond the beating they receive.

“I truly believe that in most of these cases it is done for monetary gain, for views, clicks and subscribers,” Paniccia told the outlet.

“If it’s not done right, it hurts us. They are obstacles that we do not have to cross. We would like to tackle these matters from the start and conduct a proper investigation.’

The sheriff’s office spokesperson told the Daily Mail that they are founding members of the Northeast Florida Intercept Task Force, which has investigated more than 1,600 cases since 2023, “most of which involve child exploitation and child sexual abuse material.”

‘We are not concerned here with clicks, likes and views. We are here to hold offenders accountable and put suspects in jail,” the spokesperson added.

Carnicom is a father and has said he attacks and exposes alleged predators when the police’s hands are tied. In the photo he is hugging his daughter

Carnicom was arrested on charges of assault and extortion. Police have said his amateur sting operations are making it harder to secure convictions

Carnicom has posted hundreds of videos confronting alleged pedophile predators on his Instagram and Facebook pages, and has a website with longer videos blocked behind a paywall.

The vigilante predator catcher admitted to followers that his amateur investigations and sting operations are useless to police, but vowed to continue making videos holding pedophiles accountable when police hands are tied.

In a video posted in March, Carnicom said: “I’m making this video to address the people who ask me why I don’t get more convictions or why I don’t call the police and let them handle the case.”

“Usually when you see me hitting a child predator, I’ve already… called the police, and they told me there was nothing they could do because there wasn’t a real child there or I wasn’t a law enforcement officer,” he continued.

Carnicom explained that most of the alleged predators he communicates with online do not use sexually explicit language because they know they could be arrested for doing so.

“A predator doesn’t say anything sexual, they just talk about meeting a 13 year old, and they don’t say they want to kiss or anything, they just want to talk and hook up,” Carnicom said later in the video.

‘The police are not going to convict that man because he has done nothing technically or legally wrong. But we all know it’s damn weird for an adult to meet a 13-year-old kid over the internet, or anywhere else for that matter,” he continued.

“So I’m going to grab that guy, and I’m going to hit him, and I’m going to expose him.”