A 37-year-old former microbiologist who once built a following of more than 140,000 people online for his science posts has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old boy inside a Dolphin Mall bathroom stall, a crime he committed while out on bond for a nearly identical assault on a teenager two years earlier. Hunter Nicholas Hines was also declared a sexual predator and will serve 15 years of sex offender probation once he is released.
The Dolphin Mall assault happened in January 2025 at the Sweetwater shopping center, located at 11401 NW 12th St., according to WPLG Local 10. Investigators say Hines approached a 13-year-old boy, grabbed him, held him with one hand and escorted him into a bathroom stall, where he pulled down the boy's pants and molested him. The station reports the boy escaped after Hines attempted to perform oral sex on him, kicking his attacker to get free.
Miami-Dade Police detectives turned to facial recognition software run against Dolphin Mall's security footage, which showed Hines entering and exiting the restroom around the time of the assault, according to the outlet. That identification led detectives to build a photo lineup that ultimately connected Hines to the crime scene, the same reporting notes.
A Predator Already Out on Bond
What made the Dolphin Mall case especially alarming to investigators was timing: Hines was already facing an open child sexual battery charge in Indian River County when he committed the new offense. He had been released on a $300,000 bond in April 2023 and allowed to relocate to Pembroke Pines to live with his fiancée, subject to bond terms that barred him from using social media apps and from having unsupervised contact with minors under 16, per the same account.
At Hines' initial bond hearing in the Dolphin Mall case, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mindy Glazer stressed the seriousness of committing a new offense while already facing an open child sexual battery charge in another county, the report states. Hines was held at Miami-Dade's Metrowest Detention Center following his arrest and ultimately took a plea deal in Miami-Dade court, pleading to charges that included attempted sexual battery and lewd and lascivious molestation of a child.
The 2022 Treasure Coast Assault
The Indian River County case dated back to November 2022, when Hines, then 33, victimized a 14-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome on Florida's Treasure Coast. Per Indian River County deputies, Hines met the teenager through Grindr, drove him to a neighborhood, and forced the teenager to perform oral sex on him. The investigation was only launched after the victim texted a suicide hotline following the assault, which prompted sheriff's deputies to meet him at Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital, according to CBS News Miami.
Deputies eventually linked Hines to that 2022 crime scene using a Flock Safety automated license plate recognition camera that captured his white 2012 Fiat traveling toward the victim's neighborhood, combined with DNA evidence confirming sexual contact, according to Vero News. In that case, Hines pleaded no contest to three charges including child sexual battery this past May, receiving a 12-year prison sentence with credit for time served, plus 15 years of sex offender probation. It was not immediately clear whether that Indian River County sentence would run concurrently with his Miami-Dade sentence.
From Viral Science Star to Registered Predator
Before his arrests, Hines cut a very different public profile. He earned his Ph.D. in 2019 through a joint doctoral program between Bournemouth University in the U.K. and Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, conducting research on tropical ciliate microfauna out of FAU's McCarthy Laboratory in Fort Pierce, according to FAU Harbor Branch. He built an Instagram following of more than 140,000 people under the handle @microbialecology and co-authored a 2019 article in Nature's Careers Community arguing that social media could be a tool for public scientific engagement, per Evident Scientific.
Hines also frequently collaborated with the YouTube channel Brave Wilderness, appearing alongside host Coyote Peterson and producer Mark Vins in videos demonstrating tardigrades and the effects of snake venom on human blood, according to Newsweek. Those videos, aimed at young nature enthusiasts on a channel with more than 20 million subscribers, drew millions of views internationally. That online reach stands in stark contrast to the sexual predator designation he now carries.
What Sexual Predator Status Means
Under Florida Statute § 775.21, the Florida Sexual Predators Act, Hines' designation carries consequences well beyond his prison sentence. The law requires mandatory lifetime registration with no opportunity to ever petition for removal, quarterly in-person check-ins with law enforcement, and mandatory notification to schools and child care facilities within one mile of where he lives. Standard sex offenders in Florida may eventually seek removal from the registry after 25 years; sexual predators cannot.
The case adds to a troubling pattern of restroom-based assaults on children reported at Dolphin Mall in recent years. Hoodline previously reported on a December 2023 case in which a man was charged with drugging and sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl in a mall bathroom, and later covered a Dolphin Mall employee charged with video voyeurism after allegedly planting a camera in a restroom. Those cases followed a broader wave of Miami-Dade enforcement, including a July registry-compliance sweep that netted 34 sex offenders and predators across the county.
