Nevada attorney general sues platform ‘recognized as a boon to child predators’

The Nevada attorney general has sued social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, alleging they harm children.

Now, Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office is taking on Kik, a lesser-known app that has played a role in multiple child sex cases in Las Vegas.

The office’s lawsuit, filed last month in Clark County District Court, alleges that Kik has “simultaneously court(ed) a teen user base while allowing child predators to run rampant on the app.” It calls Kik “one of the most severe threats to minors currently in operation” and requests a trial, civil penalties and punitive damages.

Besides Kik, the suit names MediaLab AI, the app’s parent company, as a defendant. MediaLab did not respond to requests for comment.

Local criminal defense attorneys said they’ve encountered the app in cases, but some are skeptical of the attorney general’s suit.

“They don’t prosecute these cases,” said attorney Chris Rasmussen. “They’re just filing a suit against a website or an app, and I don’t know where that’s going to go. I feel like it’s more just to grab a headline instead of actually getting out there on the streets and doing real law enforcement work.”

Still, he said, it seemed like there might be something to the lawsuit as it relates to child pornography.

The attorney general’s office declined an interview request for this story.

“Kik’s anonymity feature and low barrier to entry, among other things, harm Nevada’s youth,” Ford said in a prior statement. “The company’s actions and false claims of safety also put Nevada’s children in danger. I will not allow companies to neglect their responsibilities to Nevada’s youth, and I will bring any offender that does so to court.”

‘Boon to child predators’

Entire pages of the lawsuit are almost completely redacted, but the suit explains why, in authorities’ view, Kik has been “recognized as a boon to child predators.”

“The platform contained a host of design features — and lack of safeguards — that made it especially easy for would-be predators to identify and approach prospective victims,” the lawsuit alleged. “Beyond not requiring any real-world identity verification for users who set up profiles, Kik also allows users to instantly join ‘public groups’ on its platform, and the communications settings within those groups allow each member to see who is participating in the group, and communicate privately via direct messaging.”

Kik knew about the danger to children, but did not act to protect them, the attorney general’s suit said. MediaLab purchased the platform in 2019, but still permitted “child predators to run rampant on the app” while cultivating teen users, according to the complaint.

The platform also “failed to provide meaningful warnings” to teens and their parents, attorneys claimed.

The suit said the defendants have claimed Kik is an 18-and-over platform, but those claims “continue to ring hollow.”

A subsequent filing said that the state was asking for some parts of the complaint to be redacted or sealed because the defendants had labeled them confidential during an investigation.

Local cases

A parade of defendants have been accused of illicit activity on Kik in recent years.

In 2023, Tanner Castro, a Clark County prosecutor, was arrested and accused of attempting to lure a child for sex.

Castro, who was fired from his deputy district attorney job, chatted with an undercover officer over Kik and Snapchat, believing he was talking to a minor girl, according to his arrest report. His trial is scheduled for February in federal court.

Alexander Scott Derringer, a former Las Vegas elementary school teacher sentenced to prison last year, shared over 130 files of sexual abuse material via accounts on the Kik messenger app, federal prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors have also said the app was used by Kenneth Robison to share a video he recorded of himself sexually exploiting a child younger than 12.

James Wynhoff, a Las Vegas resident sentenced in 2023 to 10 years in federal prison, used Kik, too. In discussions on the platform, he agreed to pay $100 to have sex with a 15-year-old girl who turned out to be a detective, according to prosecutors.

Rasmussen is critical of sting operations.

“They’re not capturing the real predators,” he said. “They’re capturing sad old guys who are lonely, who are chatting to people online.”

Attorney Ryan Helmick said he’s seen Kik in child pornography cases. If it is a haven for child pornography, it should be sued and shut down, he said.

Defense lawyer Robert Draskovich said the attorney general’s suit seemed well-intentioned but would likely not be effective.

“Maybe it makes society feel better,” he said. “Everybody wants to protect their kids.”

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.