A Skyrim username typo sent an innocent man to prison for 18 months
Police investigating a child exploitation case subpoenaed the wrong Kik account, missing a single underscore. Brandon Klayme was charged, convicted, and served his full sentence. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has now declared him factually innocent.
The username police were looking for was fus__ro_dah. The one they subpoenaed was fus_ro_dah.
One underscore. That difference cost Brandon Klayme of Halifax, Nova Scotia his freedom, his reputation, and eighteen months of his life.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has now overturned his conviction and declared him factually innocent.
How the error happened
The investigation started in 2018, in Wisconsin.
Police there were pursuing someone using the Kik messaging platform to target a 12-year-old girl. The suspect’s handle referenced the Unrelenting Force dragon shout from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a phrase familiar to anyone who has played the game.
When investigators subpoenaed Kik for the account’s records, the request went out with one underscore instead of two. That returned records for a different account entirely, belonging to Klayme.
From there the chain held. Kik supplied an email address. The IP traced to Canada. Halifax Regional Police took over, an internet provider matched the address to Klayme, and he was arrested in February 2020.
What the search found
This is the part that should have stopped it.
Police obtained a warrant and seized Klayme’s devices. They found nothing. No connection to the child, no messages, no images, nothing linking him to any of it. His account reportedly hadn’t even been active during the period in question.
He was charged anyway. He was tried. In April 2023 he was found guilty, and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison followed by 18 months of probation.
He served the full term.
Nobody caught it
The discrepancy sat in the case file the entire time.
The Court of Appeal was direct about it. The officer did not notice that the perpetrator’s username contained a double underscore, the panel wrote, and the discrepancy went completely unnoticed at trial. It was never brought to the trial judge’s attention.
It surfaced only when lawyer Zeb Brown went back through the original subpoena while preparing Klayme’s appeal. Prosecutors reviewed the records and agreed the conviction could not stand.
“In the latter stages of preparing my appeal arguments, it was discovered that the subpoena contained a subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Klayme said.
What the court said
The appeal panel drew a distinction that matters enormously for Klayme, and it made the point deliberately.
This was not, the court wrote, a situation where an acquittal is entered because the Crown failed to prove its case, or because a trial error made a verdict unsafe. In these circumstances, the panel wrote, Mr. Klayme is factually innocent of the offences. He should never have been charged, let alone convicted.
That phrasing is not routine. Courts overturn convictions for many reasons, most of which leave a question hanging over the person. This one closed it.
What’s left
The man who was actually being investigated has been identified in reporting only by a first name, and was reportedly in California rather than Canada. Whether that case ever went anywhere isn’t clear.
Canadian authorities are examining how the failure happened. Klayme, meanwhile, has a court declaration of innocence and three years of his life spent as a convicted child sex offender, eighteen months of it in a prison cell, on charges built on a subpoena for the wrong account.
For anyone who has ever picked a username because a game phrase was memorable and the handle was still free, the specifics land somewhere uncomfortable. Klayme grabbed a Skyrim reference before someone else could. Somebody else picked a version with an extra character. Every institution that should have caught the difference looked straight past it, for five years, right through a criminal trial.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
CBC (via Polygon and PC Gamer) (2026), verified for Klayme’s February 2020 arrest by Halifax Regional Police, the Wisconsin investigation origin, the two-underscore versus one-underscore username discrepancy, the April 2023 guilty verdict, and the 18-month sentence plus 18 months probation
Kotaku (2026), verified for the Court of Appeal’s full quoted passage distinguishing factual innocence from an acquittal, the panel’s statement that he should never have been charged, and Klayme’s own description of the subpoena error
Dexerto (2026), verified for lawyer Zeb Brown discovering the error while reviewing the original subpoena, prosecutors agreeing the appeal should be allowed, and Klayme serving the entire sentence
Vice and HotHardware (2026), verified for the search warrant turning up no evidence connecting Klayme to the victim, the conversations or any illegal material, the account’s inactivity during the relevant period, the investigative chain through Kik and the internet provider, and the Canadian review of the failure