On April 29th, a paedophile vigilante group, 607 Predator Hunters, uploaded a video to youtube, which displays Zach Wheeler, a news anchor at the New York NBC affiliate WETM-TV, trying to meet a 15 year old boy for sex – after driving 3 hours to meet him.

In the 17 minute video, posted to their YouTube channel, he explains that he wasn’t there to have sex with the young boy, but he was instead “looking to do a story on this” and that “I was going to come, and tell that kid, bring him to his house, and go to work. I have no desire, no desire to have sex with that child,” and that he was there to “talk to that kid and get him off of these apps,” keeping this in mind, a couple of minutes later, 607 PH asked him, “Let’s backtrack, so you did know the age?”, to which Zach responded “18 years old.” Zach eventually admits, later in the video, that he knew the boy was 15 years of age.

Around four minutes into the video, Zach attempts to pull the victim card, “why do you guys do this to gay and lesbian people?”, which forced one of the predator hunters to respond, “we do this to everyone.”

Some of the messages allegedly sent from Zach to the 15 year old boy include, “I want to cuddle”, “any shirtless pics?”, “you into thick chubbier guys?”, etc.

Zach Wheeler has since been fired by NBC, which was confirmed in a statement posted to their social media Sunday afternoon, “Friday evening, WETM was made aware of a video posted to YouTube regarding one of our employees. The local group that posted the video claimed that the employee engaged in inappropriate behaviour. WETM management investigated questions raised by the video, and the employee is no longer employed by WETM.”

Currently, there have been no updates as to whether Zach will be facing any charges.

This incident, along with the countless other news anchors, or people in positions of authority caught trying to meet children for sex, highlights the importance in paedophile vigilante groups, such as this one. Many mainstream news platforms demonise paedophile hunter groups, and this just further proves why we need them.