Cop Used Fake Grindr Profile and This Torso Picture to Arrest Gay Man — But Was It Legal?

Evan Lakatos was just trying to meet someone. Working long hours as a deli operations manager overseeing 64 locations across Michigan, the 38-year-old gay man relied on dating apps to connect with others — especially in rural areas where “there’s not anywhere for gay people, lesbians, anybody to go and just sit and hang out and meet,” he tells Pride Source.

During a work trip to Newaygo County in West Michigan in 2021, Lakatos, who was 34 at the time, opened Grindr and saw “Taylor Williams” — a profile featuring photos of what appeared to be a fit, muscular adult man. Over the next day and a half, they exchanged more than 100 messages. Lakatos thought he was heading to meet another consenting adult for a casual encounter.

Instead, he walked into a police sting operation that would destroy his career, land him on the sex offender registry and fundamentally alter his understanding of safety and trust.

“When everything happened, my best friend and I really recounted stuff, because at first, you think, ‘How could you miss something?'” Lakatos recalls. Looking back, he remembers navigating multiple conversations on the app at one time. “I had a very busy job and this was a disconnected conversation. I was answering when I was on a break, on a quick whim when not dealing with employees or customers, just really not paying that much attention.” 

For many LGBTQ+ people like Lakatos, especially those in smaller communities, dating apps aren’t just convenient — they’re essential. “The apps are really one of the main ways we communicate with each other,” Lakatos explains. “Whether it’s pure social media like Facebook or using dating apps just as a way to socialize.”

In Muskegon, where Lakatos lives, he says, “we don’t have a gay bar anymore and people don’t necessarily want to leave their house.” The apps provide what feels like a safer alternative to the uncertainties of meeting strangers in person.

But that sense of safety proved illusory for Lakatos. What he didn’t know was that “Taylor” was actually a 27-year-old police officer who was working undercover in Fremont, about an hour north of Grand Rapids, as part of a multijurisdictional task force operation targeting people allegedly seeking sex with minors.

To create the Grindr profile for the Taylor account, his birthdate was falsified during the signup process by a member of the task force, as the app requires users to verify they are at least 18 years old. After creating a profile with a fake adult birthdate, Grindr’s “ghost mode” feature was used to hide Taylor’s age from other users.

When reached for comment, Grindr provided Pride Source with this statement: “At Grindr, we are committed to upholding high standards of trust and user safety. Grindr has a strict policy prohibiting impersonation in any form. Any activity involving undercover stings, false identities or deception by third parties is in direct violation of this policy.”

The undercover sting that Lakatos was caught up in was not unique. Similar task forces are now operating throughout Michigan with minimal apparent oversight. Dominica Convertino, Lakatos’ appellate attorney with the State Appellate Defender Office, said they are operating “all over the state. Some are multiple counties working together. Some are a single county, effectuating their own task force.” Convertino has been working alongside Katherine Marcuz, managing attorney at the State Appellate Defender Office, who is serving as second chair on the case. The two have worked together to examine the tactics police used both during the sting and throughout Lakatos’ arrest, as well as his trial representation. 

According to Timothy Doman, the attorney representing Jayneel Jade in a separate, pending Michigan Supreme Court case involving similar police sting tactics, these operations originated with Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson’s “GHOST” (Genesee Human Oppression Strike Team) initiative. Doman said Genesee deputies have partnered with agencies around the state to teach them how to conduct these stings, claiming to have performed operations in more than 40 counties. The outcome of the People v. Jade case, which is not expected for many months, could fundamentally change the way police are required to operate similar task force operations. 

At a press conference following Lakatos’ arrest, Swanson described developing “a playbook” for these operations and training other agencies across Michigan. The operation that netted Lakatos was part of a coordinated effort involving multiple counties where six men were arrested over two nights in August 2021. The stings focused on various dating apps including the straight dating app Meet Me, Grindr, Sniffies and an adult escort website, Skip the Games. 

The Michigan State Police, which oversees multijurisdictional task forces, has not responded to requests for comment on Lakatos’ case or these undercover initiatives in general.

Did police follow their own protocols?

The exchange between Lakatos and the undercover officer reveals the subtle — and problematic — nature of these operations. Over 20 hours of messaging on Grindr and, later, via text message, the officer never clearly stated he was underage. The closest reference came buried in their conversation: “My cousin finally got the room for me I guess you have to be older than 15 to get a room.” The age of consent in Michigan is 16. 

Lakatos’ response was immediate and focused elsewhere, still determined to verify Taylor’s identity: “How rude of them. You have other pics?”

“It’s a day and a half of conversation fit in little snippets when you may be talking with other individuals at the same time,” Lakatos explains. The hotel room comment didn’t register as significant — he was multitasking at work and focused on getting more photos to verify he wasn’t being catfished since the photo provided by the officer only displayed a shirtless, muscular torso.

What makes the conversation particularly troubling is that the officer, not Lakatos, initiated and escalated the sexual content. The undercover officer wrote: “I want the dominant man to tell me what he wants” and later, “Tell me more daddy.” When Lakatos repeatedly asked for face photos to confirm the person’s identity, the officer deflected with sexual offers instead of providing verification.

The officer, posing as Taylor, also persistently pressured Lakatos to bring alcohol — despite Lakatos making no independent mention of it — with messages like “I LOVE white claws” and “are you bringing me the drinks tonight?” This alcohol would later be used against him at trial as evidence he intended to furnish drinks to a minor.

According to testimony from Detective Nicole Loomis, who helped create the decoy profile, the task force was required to follow specific protocols that were “the whole crux of the investigation,” including that:

• The chatter must clearly state they are under 16, with examples like “I’m not 16,” “I’m 13,” “I’m 14”
• The suspect must acknowledge that the chatter is underage
• The suspect must be the first to bring up sex
• Age disclosures should happen via text message, not on the original platform

In Lakatos’ case, officers seem to have violated each of these protocols. The ambiguous hotel comment occurred on Grindr, not text. There was no clear age statement. Lakatos never acknowledged speaking with someone underage. And the officer initiated sexual conversation.

Even more problematic, when officers in similar operations worked different cases, they were explicit about age. Convertino points to court transcripts from several Michigan Court of Appeals cases that show officers made direct statements about being underage, including “I’m 15 … I’m Actually 15” in People v. Jade, “I’m 15 … Ur cool with me being 15?” in People v. Stepka, and “i’m really only 15” in People v. Newby. The female officer who created the decoy profile in Lakatos’ case testified that she also gave explicit age disclosures in her other cases, though not in the specific operation that led to his charges.

“That’s very different,” Lakatos notes, adding that a similarly clear disclosure from Taylor would have led him to end the conversation immediately.

Was this police entrapment?

Convertino said that when she tells anyone the basic facts of Lakatos’ case, “every single person has the same exact response, which is, ‘It sounds like entrapment.'” She was surprised to find that Lakatos’ trial attorney had never raised this defense — a missed opportunity that is a central tenant of her appellate case.

Michigan’s entrapment law offers two theories. The first examines whether police impermissibly induced someone not ready to commit a crime. The second focuses on whether police engaged in “reprehensible conduct” that cannot be tolerated by the court system.

Convertino is arguing on appeal that Lakatos was entrapped and that his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to raise this defense. Under Michigan’s “objective test” for entrapment, courts examine whether police conduct would induce a law-abiding person to commit a crime, or whether officers engaged in “reprehensible conduct.”

Convertino said the systematic violation of the task force’s own protocols, the use of adult photos to lure targets and the ambiguous age reference all point to reprehensible conduct. She described the tactics as essentially “a bait and switch of an innocent man who thought he was talking to an adult man on Grindr.”

The appeal will take several months to work through the court system. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Sidelinger, a communications expert at Oakland University who specializes in interpersonal communication including online communication and queer identity and relationships, analyzed the conversation between Lakatos and the officer in an expert report supporting the appeal. His conclusion: the exchange was “consistent with that of two consenting adult gay men in online settings.”

Convertino said the prosecution used the Grindr messages “to present the use of terms like ‘daddy’ and ‘boy’ as being sexually deviant or predatory” without understanding how these terms are used within the gay community to convey meanings unrelated to age. 

It’s not just the gay community that uses these terms colloquially. Are we really to believe that Kelis was bringing literal underage boys to the yard based on the quality of her milkshake?

Incredulously, the jury seemed to have taken this term literally when it came to Lakatos’ conversation with Taylor. 

In everyday conversational constructs familiar to many Pride Source readers, terms like “daddy” and “boy” that prosecutors suggested indicated awareness of youth actually have specific meanings within gay male communication that have nothing to do with age. Sidelinger explained that these terms represent power dynamics between consenting adults rather than references to actual age.

Sidelinger noted that the officer playing Taylor “set the tone of the communication exchange” with lines like “I love mature men” that he initiated, leading Lakatos to adapt his responses accordingly — exactly what would happen between consenting adults online.

The arrest and aftermath

When Lakatos arrived at the hotel expecting to meet an adult, he was arrested. “Before then, I’d never interacted with the police. I had one speeding ticket on my record,” he says, adding, “I grew up believing to trust the police, that they’re there for you — that they’re there to help you. They’re not there to make you incriminate yourself or anything like that.”

But that night, his understanding of how police operate and, in many ways, his entire worldview, would shift. 

During the interrogation, officers employed tactics that experts identify as increasing the risk of false confessions. They falsely claimed they had clear evidence that the chatter had disclosed his age multiple times. Under pressure and having never been in legal trouble before, Lakatos eventually agreed that the chatter “did say he was under 16.” “I’ve learned since that people tend to ‘freeze or fawn,’” he says. “You either freeze up or you fawn, which means you’ll do anything people tell you to do. When you’re in that moment, and they’re sitting there staring at you with a camera in your face and you’ve just gone through one of the most traumatic things you’ve ever had to deal with in your life, how can they expect to get anything else other than what they’re absolutely wanting. They’ll get it out of you no matter what.” 

A comprehensive digital forensic analysis of Lakatos’ phone — containing more than 140,000 pages of data, 219,541 images, 2,453 videos and thousands of messages — revealed zero evidence he had ever sought inappropriate contact with minors.

The consequences began immediately. After more than 12 years in his managerial role, Lakatos was fired under a company policy allowing termination if an employee did “something that would make the company look bad.”

“All your information is publicly available for anybody at any time,” Lakatos explains about being on the sex offender registry. “It’s automatically assumed [to be] bad. They don’t list any specifics. People just judge off of you being on it. Period.”

Being on the public sex offender registry has made him a target for scammers who call pretending to be police, claiming he’s missed a requirement and demanding money to avoid jail time. “They have all of your information off the registry,” he says. “The first time I was very close to falling for it.”

The scammers’ tactics are sophisticated, claiming to be from local sheriff’s departments and demanding payment for supposed violations. The first time it happened, Lakatos was so frightened he drove to the sheriff’s office, only to learn he’d been targeted for fraud.

While his parents have stood beside him, even sitting in the courtroom as intimate, sexually charged conversations were read aloud, multiple friends abandoned him. “I lost several friends that had been friends for the better part of 15 years,” he says. “Most of them have since apologized after watching my court proceedings, after watching everything. But you knew me for 15 years. Why did you decide that you were going to have a snap judgment when you knew me like that?”

Lakatos soon discovered that criminal conviction affects every aspect of daily life. “They call it the ‘paper ceiling,’” Lakatos notes. “Whether it’s a degree you lack even though you have work experience, or a felony of any kind, you’re looked at differently because of this piece of paper.”

At sentencing, even the trial judge expressed concerns. Having presided over a few cases from the same task force, the judge noted that “the undercover agents [in this case] could have been a little bit more explicit in terms of the age requirement.”

The judge compared Lakatos’ case unfavorably to others where officers said things like “I’m 15 years old, I turn 16 in 3 weeks,” calling Lakatos’ case “a passing comment that maybe could have been construed as a joke.” The judge also acknowledged that “it didn’t help that they had this full-grown male that was very muscular.”

The broader pattern

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan’s LGBTQ+ Project, emphasized that these operations reflect a systemic problem that has persisted for decades. Kaplan pointed to the Rouge Park undercover sting as a prime example. In that operation, officers posing as civilians would approach or follow men they assumed were gay, make eye contact and try to provoke a response. If the man responded in any way that officers deemed suggestive — even a glance or a comment — he would be arrested under vague ordinances such as “Annoying Persons” or “Solicitation and Accosting.” The City of Detroit agreed to pay $170,000 in damages and attorneys fees in the settlement of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of six men and the Triangle Foundation (now Equality Michigan). 

 “You have to question the whole operation, this kind of entrapment,” Kaplan tells Pride Source regarding the People v. Lakatos case. “Why are you putting photos of a 27 year old [online]?” he asks. “Obviously, if you’re trying to catch people who want to engage in sex with people who are underage, you probably would want to show pictures of somebody who is definitely underage, right?”

Kaplan argues that the ambiguous age reference doesn’t meet legal standards. “The person did not say ‘I’m a minor,’ did not say ‘I’m under age 18,’ or any of that. It was an offhand comment,” he says. “I think we do assume if we go on an app like Grindr, these are going to be people 18 years and older, unless someone makes it very clear to you that they’re not.”

Doman sees a troubling pattern in these operations statewide. He said the tactics “run the gamut from very straightforward revelations of ‘I’m actually 15’ versus trying to almost sneak it in so the target doesn’t notice.” He said this “certainly tees up the inference that police are simply interested in arresting people for the sake of charging them.” And, while the sting related to Lakatos’ case involved official law enforcement, that’s not always the case. 

According to Lakatos’ research, someone can “literally take a class online and watch a video and you’re certified to [go undercover to] do this.” Indeed, through programs like Perverted-Justice, the civilian organization behind the “To Catch a Predator” TV series, non-police volunteers often pose as minor decoys online. According to reports about their operations, prospective volunteers undergo background checks and training including learning how to set up a profile, chat online and gather evidence. The organization has “65 volunteers trained as chatroom decoys” among thousands of registered users, suggesting relatively accessible entry requirements for those assisting with online sting operations.

Even when age disclosures are more explicit, Doman argues the fundamental problem remains: “Police are not investigating crimes; they are creating crimes and trolling for people to commit them. They’re doing nothing to actually combat child sex trafficking. I think these stings are more virtue-testing ploys than a bona fide effort to catch actual predators.”

Swanson has framed these operations differently, claiming in the press conference following Lakatos’ arrest that “anybody who comes to have sex with an underage boy or girl is engaged in human trafficking” and that most arrestees “have no criminal history. Nine out of 10 of them have never had any brush with the law.” But this admission that most targets have no criminal background raises questions about whether these operations are actually identifying dangerous predators or simply creating crimes where none previously existed.

The systematic violation of the task force’s own protocols, the use of adult photos to lure targets and the ambiguous age reference all point to operations that may be more about generating arrests than protecting actual children.

“It was all about how bad we could make Mr. Lakatos look and get away with it,” Doman reflects. “They don’t care. It’s all about their numbers and their money and their image.”

This numbers-focused approach aligns with the public messaging from these operations. At the press conference announcing Lakatos’ arrest, Swanson claimed that “one predator identified saves the lives of 25 future victims,” stating that “arresting six has potentially protected 150 victims.” But such statistics mask the reality that operations like the one that got Lakatos arrested may be ensnaring people with no predatory intent while police resources aren’t being leveraged against confirmed child sex predators. 

Lakatos spent 71 days in jail, an experience that illuminated broader systemic problems. Overcrowded cells meant sleeping on the floor in a room where 15 men shared a 12-bed room. He suspects that poor food was intentionally inadequate to force inmates to spend money at the commissary, which he says is owned by the same company that provides meals. Perhaps more troubling: “Every day in jail is $30. So when you get out, you have a giant bill that you’re now responsible for.”

“You exit with this big bill,” he explains to Pride Source, describing a system designed to profit from incarceration. Phone calls cost $3.50 for 15 minutes. Medications require payment from the incarcerated person. Even basic necessities like cups must be purchased from the commissary. Because he had support from the outside, he was able to stay well supplied and shared as much as he could with other prisoners who lacked outside help. 

The psychological impact of his arrest and incarceration has been severe. “It took me a long time afterwards and I did seek out therapy and professional help because it was such a jarring change to my life,” he says. His therapist helped him understand: “You thought you were being [safe] and so many things happened because you thought you were safe but you weren’t.”

During the trial, any illusion that Lakatos retained any right to privacy all but vanished. Newaygo County streams court proceedings on YouTube, meaning Lakatos’ most intimate conversations were broadcast publicly. “You have zero privacy afterwards,” he says. “It’s like you’re just airing everything to them and stuff you don’t necessarily want to air to everybody.”

The experience has fundamentally changed how Lakatos and his friends approach online dating. “The biggest thing now, and even [something] my friends have all taken out of it, is to do your homework and do your due diligence. And if it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.”

At a gay coffee hour in Muskegon, a friend shared that Lakatos’ case had made him more cautious. The friend explained that he had recently hooked up with someone who potentially looked “too young,” prompting him to check ID at the door. The person turned out to be in his mid-20s, but the friend said Lakatos’ experience had made him think twice about taking chances.

“Be cautious because they’re using these tactics to try to get you,” Lakatos warns. “And it makes you feel like you’re talking with another consenting adult.”

For anyone facing police questioning, he offers hard-earned advice: “If you ever have to get questioned by the police, you say, ‘I want an attorney.’ And you repeat [that]. If you can practice saying that in front of a mirror, things can be dramatically different for you.”

For LGBTQ+ people using dating apps, these operations create a chilling new reality. The knowledge that police officers may be posing as adults on platforms designed for adult connections fundamentally alters the landscape of queer dating and community connection.

The case highlights fundamental questions about proportionality and justice. As Kaplan frames it: “If there’s no mention about age or the photographs look like someone older and you’re assuming it’s an adult just based on the pictures, and if the age is never mentioned in the conversation, there’s no grounds to charge that person.”

While some argue that ensnaring people like Lakatos is worth it if it means getting child predators off the street, the high cost of ripping someone out of their life can’t be ignored. “It’s kind of like how, at least back when I was a kid, everybody was enraged that dolphins would get captured in tuna nets,” Lakatos says. “Are you really willing to sacrifice the few for the many? It doesn’t matter that you’re ruining this person’s life?”

Looking ahead: Michigan ruling on app stings

The legal landscape may soon shift significantly, as the outcome of People v. Jade will establish the first binding precedent on entrapment law as applied to these online sting operations in Michigan.

The Jade case involves a similar bait-and-switch operation where police posted an ad for a 20-year-old adult escort on Skip the Games, a website for “consenting adults.” When Jayneel Jade responded to the adult escort ad, the undercover officer later revealed “I’m 15.” After Jade expressed hesitation (“Got to be 16”), the officer insisted she was “Actually 15 like real life lol.” When Jade arrived at the hotel expecting to meet an adult, he was arrested and charged with felonies carrying up to 20 years in prison instead of the 93-day misdemeanor he would have faced for soliciting an adult.

The Michigan Supreme Court granted leave to appeal in the Jade case in May 2025, specifically questioning whether the Court of Appeals made errors in three areas of entrapment analysis. Convertino said that “once the Michigan Supreme Court issues an opinion on that, that will be massive in terms of the impact and the implications that it will have on the way that entrapment is litigated in Michigan.”

Doman believes the court incorrectly stated that simply providing an opportunity to commit a crime doesn’t constitute entrapment, when the law actually protects people who wouldn’t have committed the crime without police inducement. The distinction is crucial: True entrapment law protects people who had no intent to commit the charged crime.

Doman said “a favorable ruling in Jade could encourage police to focus their sting operations on people actively looking to solicit sex with minors,” rather than ensnaring people who had no such intent.

Convertino will file an amicus brief in the Jade case on behalf of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, given the potential impact on all similar cases statewide. The decision could fundamentally change how these operations are conducted — or whether they can continue in their current form.

As for Lakatos, despite everything, he remains optimistic about his appeal. “I’m obviously very hopeful for a good outcome,” he says of working with his appellate attorneys. “Everything they say is very heartfelt and I feel like they’ve really gotten, even if the courts don’t get it, how unfair things can be.”

More than anything, he’s looking forward to closure. “I’m looking forward to stepping away and having this be my past… looking forward to not having to think about it.”

But he also recognizes the broader importance of his case. When asked why he agreed to speak publicly, he’s clear: “People need to know just what could happen but also the impact — it could impact your friends, your job, your life.”

“This is not the thing that defines you,” Lakatos reminds himself and others in similar situations. “This is just a thing that happened.”

But for too many people caught in these operations, that “thing” becomes a life sentence — one that raises serious questions about justice, proportionality and whether these tactics actually protect anyone at all.