State of Washington v. Hayden Aaron Erlandson

Yakima, Washington, criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with econd degree attempted rape of a child and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, following a “Net Nanny” sting operation where he communicated with an undercover officer posing as a 13-year-old girl.

Reported by Kent Morlan

o conduct an operation, a detective acts as a “chatter.” The chatter creates a fake
profile on a popular dating or social media platform. The profile shows the user’s
purported age, which must be at least 18 for the platforms’ verification purposes. A
young-looking law enforcement officer is selected as the undercover decoy and provides photographs for the profile. Then the chatter waits for a user to initiate conversation.

Chatters are trained to communicate with users on the platform responsively, letting the
other person steer the dialogue. They are also trained to reveal they are underage early in
the conversation and to text like a young person by purposely misspelling words and using slang and emojis.1 If a user continues to pursue the underage chatter, the chatter
will agree to meet for a sexual encounter. ICAC assembles surveillance, tactical arrest, evidence, and interview teams and facilitates the meetup at an undercover location.

In November 2019, ICAC conducted a Net Nanny operation in Yakima County.
The chatter created a profile on Skout, a popular online platform that connects users
based on the type of relationship they are seeking. The profile showed a female named “Qnkyrie” and stated that she was 39 years old and living in Yakima. Her profile picture was a photograph of the adult decoy, filtered to appear younger. Qnkyrie described herself as “young, short and sassy. very independant” and said she was looking for “Friends, Fun, Chat.” Ex. 13.

The Defendant was found guilty.

Affirmed on appeal.