emi news is looking into a video that allegedly shows a public figure who was employed by a different media outlet in elmira sending sexually suggestive text messages with whom he believed to be a 15-year-old boy now we've spent the past several days working to gather information and to verify some of the information before reporting on this incident and because no criminal charges have been filed for legal reasons we will not identify the subject in that video the video posted to youtube on friday shows a confrontation that begins inside of a sporting goods store in vestal in broome county before it moved outdoors several men are seen confronting the subject about why he was sending sexual text messages to a young boy now we want to be clear an actual child was not involved in the text exchange but rather a group who call themselves the 607 predator hunters who claim their goal is to protect the community from predators trying to meet children text messages provided to weny from the group show the decoy telling the person he is almost 16 deeper into the exchange the messages become sexually explicit and the pair eventually arrange a meet-up in vestal new york now during the confrontation which was caught on video the subject denies knowing that the person that they were chatting with was 15 and then alleges that he was only planning to talk to the teen about the dangers of these types of apps and later said he knew it was the 607 predator hunter group and that he wanted to do a story at one point he even asked the group if they wanted money the confrontation ends with him getting in his car and driving away wen news has contacted multiple police agencies in the area who tell us no complaint regarding this incident has been filed now law enforcement does tell us because the group conducting these types of stings are civilians and they are not working with police the material is legally inadmissible however the person's employer wetmtv posted a statement to its facebook page today saying quote 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 behavior wetn management investigated the questions raised by the video and the employee is no longer employed by wetm and quote and now you're going to ruin my whole entire life i'm going to lose my job and everything and we news has posted the photos of those text messages we've obtained on our website weny.com yeah well i'm almost 16. you asked if i live with my uncle yeah i said i'm almost 16 so what does that mean 15. you knew it because we continued to talk about high school everything else no you so this whole you didn't know why did you take the most of it why did you do this to catch pedophiles now but staying on topic let's talk about that group behind the headline they're called 607 predator hunters w e wise marsha augustine spoke with that group today to find out more about what they do marcia that's right nick the group is made up of three men from the binghamton area they did not want to be identified but said they have families their fathers and they have full-time jobs and call themselves the 607 predator hunters these guys weren't getting off the streets they weren't getting convicted and that's why we decided to do what we do 607 predator hunters want to keep their identity protected they explained to me why they started the group and how they do the work they do our organization sets up decoys on various social media websites and then we interact with people who are looking to meet underage children in our area while you're here let's step outside i don't want to do this in the store the group then discusses what happens after a week or two of online interaction with the person they usually divulge sexual information and we we plan to meet with them and we show up and uh they run into us we record them and we expose them to our community and how do they coordinate the meetup exactly well first there's an exchange of pictures sometimes phone numbers sometimes even real names so we get information that helps us to identify them when they do show up something like the clothes they're wearing or what what time they're going to be there the location the group says they have been doing this for about a year and have caught nearly 40 people in their latest catch involving a public figure from elmira they were quite shocked we were definitely surprised on who we got and um that he came through with it and that uh somebody in the face of everyone's eyes could uh do something like that they explained doing what they do comes with challenges and say they would like to see police catch more alleged predators but unfortunately that's not the case and the amount of guys we're catching and as fast as we're catching them i mean the you know it's it's a very good thing now it is important to mention groups like these have been popping up all over the country however many police agencies and da's in several states have come out to say that they do not condone the actions of these groups and it's for their safety and the safety of bystanders things could spiral out of control once a suspect is cornered in a public place and also there's some legal challenges as well we spoke to one local agency who says these types of things when police are not involved results in evidence that is not admissible in the courtroom [Music] you