A Hudson, Wyoming, man who became the subject of a YouTube vigilante’s pedophile sex-crime sting operation Friday was booked into the local jail later that day, and was still there Wednesday, held on charges that have not yet been disclosed publicly.
Along with being arrested, the man’s boss also fired him immediately.
Tommy Fellows, of Colorado Ped Patrol, posted a video to his YouTube channel Friday showcasing his confrontation with Sean Brennan, 57 of Hudson, Wyoming, at Brennan’s place of work in the nearby town of Lander.
Throughout the video, Fellows referenced a binder in his hands featuring what he said was a transcript of sexually-charged conversations between Brennan and online decoy “girls,” including one who told Brennan “she” was 13.
Fellows runs a YouTube operation exposing alleged child predators by having decoys chat sexually online with people while posing as underaged girls or boys. Then Fellows confronts the alleged predators about those conversations while streaming live on YouTube.
The Confrontation
“I have a little incident of a couple girls you’ve been talking to on the internet,” Fellows told Brennan after Brennan, apparently thinking Fellows was a potential customer, offered to help him at his place of work.
“Do you get sexual with them?” asked Fellows, after the two men walked outside together.
“No,” said Brennan, shaking his head. “I let them know off the bat.”
“So you’d never send, like, inappropriate pictures or anything like that?” asked Fellows.
“Nope,” said Brennan.
“So that phone on you has no child porn on it or anything like that?” asked Fellows.
Brennan again replied, “Nope.”
Fellows said he could prove otherwise and asked if he should have the police come check. He then started flipping through the binder.
“I have three of these books, right? Three different children,” said Fellows, who also recounted a conversation in which Brennan had allegedly said told the decoy that he’d had a 16-year-old girlfriend.
Brennan said the 16-year-old was emancipated, and that he didn’t sleep with her anyway, but made the claim up for the internet.
“Do you beg minors for naked pictures often?” asks Fellows in the video. “You said, ‘Send me a picture’ and you got pissed off, then you said, ‘Listen little girl, just remember, I’m not mad, but don’t ever ask me for a picture again.’”
Fellows then accused Brennan of teaching lewd acts to one of the “girls,” of making sexual plans with her and sending her sexual pictures.
Brennan says in the video that he wasn’t going to go to Colorado and actually do the things he discussed with the decoy.
Sex Offense
Fellows also confronted Brennan about having been convicted of a child pornography crime while he was living in Arizona around 25 years ago. Brennan had to register as a sex offender for the crime, both men noted.
But Brennan claims in the video that he didn’t have to keep registering as a sex offender after moving to Wyoming, and said Wyoming authorities told him that his Arizona child-porn conviction was “crap” by their standards.
Brennan said he was convicted after doing research on a public library computer about which nude beach to visit with his then-girlfriend, and some of the websites happened to contain pictures of underaged girls.
No Clue ‘What This Moron Was Doing’
Brennan’s boss Daniel Carey, longtime owner of Shirts & More, emerges from his store at one point in the video to ask what was going on.
Brennan tells Fellows, “I’m probably going to get canned now.”
Indeed, Carey appears in the video with an air of concern and disgust, even producing Brennan’s job application at one point to see whether Brennan had disclosed his prior conviction on it. He hadn’t, Carey confirmed.
Carey told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that he fired Brennan immediately that day, and that he never would have hired him or even let him in the store if he’d known what “this moron” was allegedly doing.
The business owner said he’s disillusioned and has lost some of his trust in people.
If he noticed a red flag at work, it was that Brennan was on his phone often and struggling to focus on the job, said Carey, adding that his staffers are also shocked and disappointed.
“This was so far from what my company would even consider,” Carey continued. “He was pretty, I don’t know what the word is, good at hiding it, to say the least. Truly stunning that he’d been doing this and I had no clue.”
Carey was able to hire a replacement for Brennan by Monday morning, he said.
‘Support This Local Business’
In the video, Fellows appeared impressed by Carey’s reaction to the news.
Carey approached the two men outside, demanded to know what was going on, refused to leave when Brennan tried to get him to leave the discussion, and — when he learned of the allegations — said he was firing Brennan immediately.
“If you guys know this area or you are in this area, make sure you come down and support this local business,” says Fellows in the video. “What a great owner.”
Lander Police Department On Scene
In the video, Lander Police Department Officer David Milovich responds to the store, warns Fellows that his license plate tags are expired and notes that he’d worked with Fellows during a prior stint policing in Colorado.
Milovich started looking through the binder. He lamented that “Wyoming is way behind Colorado” in the strength of its sex-crime laws and said that at first glance, he didn’t see enough evidence to arrest Fellows on scene for an alleged felony.
If the binder evidence is credible, it may have indicated that Brennan was disseminating obscene material, but that’s only a misdemeanor in Wyoming. And generally, the state’s officers can’t arrest people for a misdemeanor committed outside their presence unless they have a warrant, though they can issue a citation.
Milovich strategizes with another officer on scene in the video.
Ultimately, the other officer tells Fellows police had probable cause to seize Brennan’s phone.
The video ends with Milovich explaining that police needed to investigate further, and Fellows walking away saying “great cops.”
The Lander Police Department did not respond to a Tuesday request for additional comment.
But officers were able to arrest Brennan minutes or hours after Fellows filmed the video.
Brennan was booked into the Fremont County Detention Center on Friday, the jail confirmed to Cowboy State Daily.
Another source verified that the Brennan booked Friday is the same Brennan from the video.
Court documents were not available as of Wednesday because of a state law limiting public exposure of sex cases at the preliminary stage.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
