A username typo sent the wrong man to prison for over a year

Credit: Andy Walker / Android Authority TL;DR A Canadian man was wrongfully convicted of child sex abuse charges and served an 18-month prison sentence. It turns out US police accidentally typed his Kik messenger username instead of the actual suspect’s handle. US police then handed over the innocent man’s info to Canadian police, with a Canadian court convicting him solely on the erroneous username.

We’ve all mistyped someone’s username before, whether it’s on social media, gaming networks, or other platforms. Unfortunately, it turns out that police mistyped a suspect’s username, subsequently sending him to jail for 18 months. A Nova Scotia court overturned Brandon Klayme’s conviction for child sex abuse charges after it emerged that Wisconsin police mistakenly typed his username in a subpoena instead of the actual suspect’s handle (h/t: Ars Technica ).

More specifically, Klayme’s Kik messenger username was fus_roh_dah, while the suspect’s handle was fus__roh_dah. That is, the suspect’s username had an extra underscore.