He is the beanie-wearing vigilante trawling internet dating apps for predators who he later exposes to legions of adoring subscribers online.
Amir Hawatt, who goes by the moniker Faze Nighthawk, has amassed millions of views on social media for carrying out what he and others see as a vital public service.
The tactic is simple: Scour chatrooms for predators. Approach them under the guise of a pre-teen or barely-teenage boy or girl. Engage in often disturbing conversations online. Convince them to meet in public.
When the alleged predators eventually do turn up — sometimes after as many as seven months of baiting — there is no young person waiting for them.
Instead, Faze greets them with a camera crew, some microphones and a disarming approach that time and time again involves the accused confessing to grooming young people for sex.
In a recent video, Faze meets with an alleged child groomer in a public street in Sydney.
“So we can both agree she was a 13-year-old girl?” he asks the man.
“Yes. I sent a picture of my d**k. My bad, my total bad,” the man replies in the video, which has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.
“How long have you had an attraction to kids?” Faze asks.
“I haven’t. That’s the whole thing,” the man replies.
Within minutes, having convinced the man he is there to turn his life around, the police arrive.
“Are the police here for me?” the man asks.
“Can you just make them go away?”
The vigilante, who travels interstate for stings and spends countless hours in the darkest parts of the internet, is good at what he does. But that might not matter.
This week, he called his own work “a big waste of time”.
“In all honesty it feels like a big waste of time catching predators here in Australia. For what?” he wrote online.
“For them to end up getting three months in jail? For the judges to end up throwing out cases?
“These predators are confessing to having videos of kids being raped on their devices, and I’m constantly hearing ‘they’re out on bail’.
“Australia has no justice system, this is a rehabilitation country. Some of the worst offenders in history come from this country, and their sentences are a big slap on the wrist.
“Do you really think I want to spent seven + months investigating someone, going back and forth with them daily through a decoy account, travelling to another state to catch them, getting them to confess to have (child pornography), testifying against them in court, and all I get to do is expose them and not let them serve justice?
“When I interview predators, I’m holding myself back and acting like their friend to have them admit to the most disgusting things, in hopes that the justice system takes care of them.
“When the justice system fails, why would I want to endure listening to their confessions knowing that they won’t face true punishment?”
Australia’s justice system is lenient towards child sex offenders — at least compared to western standards — and the offenders know it.
Andrew Carpenter, who proudly wears the title of “the most hated man in Australia by child sex offenders”, is a partner at Websters Lawyers and an advocate for sex crime victims.
In an interview with news.com.au this week, he said Faze Nighthawk was “filling a void”, because politicians do not take child sexual abuse seriously.
“The thing that Australians need to realise is we need more funding for crimes related to child sexual abuse and it shouldn’t be up to members of the public to try to prosecute and collate evidence,” he said.
“Until there’s more funding in this area, an area that’s growing exponentially, we’re just going to see this form of alleged crime continue to rise.
“The thing with Faze is that he’s acting on behalf of the Australian public who are screaming for our parliaments to implement stricter laws related to child sexual offending.
“We need to see minimum mandatory sentencing. We need to see the statistics — that show one-in-three girls and one-in-five boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday — drop. Until our parliaments pass significant laws that will deter offending and protect survivors, these crimes will continue to rise.
“It’s unfortunate that people like Faze have to get involved, but they’re simply trying to fill a void that the Australian public thinks the parliaments have dropped the ball on.”
He said the problem for Faze was that several Australian states and territories make it “illegal to film people without consent”.
“It all comes down to the admissibility of evidence. If the ordinary punter is going out and filming videos, we might see that these videos are going to be thrown out,” Mr Carpenter said.
“In some states and territories it’s illegal to film people without consent. So some of those videos cannot be used in court. Police have to go through certain channels in order to get warrants and wire taps on individuals and get search warrants to look through phones.
“The fact that people like Faze are doing this says it’s what the Australian public wants.”
Mr Carpenter has been outspoken about sentencing for child sex offenders in Australia.
“It’s not deterring offenders when they’re seeing that if they commit crimes they’ll get (Community Correction Orders or suspended sentences),” he said.
“Anyone living in Victoria during the pandemic spent more time in ‘home detention’ than some child sex offenders do.”
Faze Nighthawk says he can only go after “little fish”.
“Unfortunately, they run the world,” he said.
“The Epstein files proved that. As civilians, we can only try our best to be good people in a world full of satanic pedophiles.
“If you want to start exposing predators, you must stay in your lane and focus on the little fish.
“Once you start poking around their territory, they’ll take you out. And I am aware of this.”
The problem, meanwhile, continues to grow.
According to Mr Carpenter, who operates out of South Australia, the percentage of people charged with crimes pertaining to child sexual abuse in the District Court of South Australia this week were as follows.
– Monday 10 August: 26.66 per cent
– Tuesday 11 August: 36.6 per cent
– Wednesday 12 August: 20.51
– Thursday 13 August: 31.82
– Friday 14 August: 24.07
Got a story or tip-off? Email rohan.smith1@news.com.au