Who's That Streamer Catching Predators With Your Favorite Rappers?

Trigger warning: Child predation

It’s been over a decade since NBC’s To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen left our television screens, but viewers' appetite for that kind of “gotcha” content remains unsatiated. Since the show’s cancellation in 2008, the mantle has been picked up by the new generation of creators. One of those leading the charge is livestreamer Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, a man with a long history of courting controversy on the internet. Maybe you have or haven’t heard of him. Either way, let’s break down who he is and what he’s about.

What’s This Vitaly Guy’s Deal?

Zdorovetskiy creates content alongside some of music’s most recognizable artists, including Akon, French Montana, Lil Pump, Swae Lee, The Game, Ty Dolla $ign, YG, and more. He teams up with these artists on Kick, the gambling-backed livestreaming platform that serves as an alternative to Amazon’s Twitch, to broadcast his sting operations. Sometimes, the busts end with real-world consequences, like one incident in May 2024 where a Miami man was arrested on charges of traveling to meet a minor for sex. Other times, they’re just bizarre, like in August 2024 when he made an alleged child predator (and Twitch streamer) drink cow’s milk straight from the udder.

This has been Zdorovetskiy’s bread-and-butter content since at least January 2024, when he announced one of his seemingly earliest broadcasts with popular and controversial streamer Adin Ross. Since then, Zdorovetskiy’s portrayed himself as a vigilante catching alleged child predators on Kick to his almost 300,000 followers, with his livestreams generating tens of thousands of views. While he’s been making a name for himself as a sort of new-age Chris Hansen these days, he wasn’t always creating this kind of content. In fact, the streamer previously carried out a number of pranks that landed him in jail more than once.

Wait, Vitaly’s Been Arrested A Few Times?

Born in Russia in 1992, Zdorovetskiy lived in Ukraine until he was about 14 years old, at which point he emigrated to the U.S. and found his way to Florida. When Zdorovetskiy first began uploading to YouTube in the early 2010s, he primarily released prank content typical of that era on the internet. One of his most popular videos, “Miami Zombie Attack Prank,” featured him dressed up as a zombie and traveling to some of Miami’s poorest areas to scare random bystanders. With well over 30 million views at the time of writing, this was the video that put Zdorovetskiy on the map. But it wasn’t the only one.

He ran a series titled “Russian Hitman,” where he cosplayed as said Russian Hitman with a briefcase to freak people out. He’d drop the briefcase off on a table as if it were a bomb. He’d swap bags with random people on the street in an attempt to “exchange” goods. He’d even handcuff the briefcase to random folks in the world, saying that the “transaction has been complete.” Each of these videos, no matter how violently they ended, attracted millions of eyes, which eventually pushed his YouTube channel to the top of the algorithm and garnered more than 10 million subscribers.

As Zdorovetskiy’s popularity increased, so did the magnitude of his pranks, with some leading to serious legal consequences. In 2012, he was arrested for threatening a man with a bag that, Zdorovetskiy joked, had an explosive in it. According to a police report viewed by CBS News at the time, he was held without bail, charged for a felony bomb hoax, and faced up to 15 years in prison, though the case has reportedly been dismissed. He was then taken into custody in 2016 after climbing LA’s Hollywood sign in an apparent stunt, and then again in the same year for streaking on the basketball court during Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

He repeated his streaking antics in 2017, sprinting across a baseball field during Game 5 of the World Series, though this didn’t appear to result in an arrest. In 2018, he was apprehended and subsequently escorted out of Florida’s Boca Raton resort because, according to local station WPBF at the time, law enforcement knew Zdorovetskiy as someone who performed pranks that “threatened public safety.” He also found himself in handcuffs in 2020 for climbing the Egyptian pyramids, which ended with him reportedly spending five days in local jail.

While most of his arrests are connected to petty crimes—i.e. pranks that would excite middle schoolers—he landed behind bars for something far more serious in 2020: allegedly straddling and pummeling a woman with clenched fists who was out for a leisure jog. He was charged for felony aggravated battery and has since been released, with the case reportedly being quietly settled in 2021.

What’s The Connection To Catching Predators?

Frankly, Zdorovetskiy’s arrests don’t have much to do with catching child predators. Not yet, anyway. According to a livestream mirror on Kick earlier this year, Zdorovetskiy was confronted by what appeared to be LA police for his content. In reality, many viewers and publications think his “Catch A Predator” series is staged, and it wouldn’t be unwarranted considering he’s known for pranks that turn out to be fake.

People online believe the same thing, as the cameras are set up inside these alleged predators’ homes and, more often than not, everyone engages in some absurd behavior that seems pre-planned, like head shaving or sumo wrestling. There was even a recent incident in which Quavo, former Migos member, was supposed to catch predators with Zdorovetskiy, only to reportedly take the $50,000 offer and dip. Zdorovetskiy said he’s suing Quavo.

At the end of the day, while there are a lot of unanswered questions around what Zdorovetskiy is doing—Who’s paying these rappers? What happens to the accused? How are the cameras set up inside the house?—this “Catch A Predator” series is making waves online. Will he coordinate with law enforcement to put these predators behind bars, like he did in May 2024? Or is this just a publicity stunt, a means for Zdorovetskiy to keep his name in the zeitgeist? Your guess is as good as mine. But maybe the popularity of his livestreams is all serendipitous, especially since the summer’s biggest hit, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” focuses on pedophilic accusations. I guess Zdorovetskiy’s trying to send these predators to cell block one.

Complex has reached out to Hansen and Zdorovetskiy for comment.