A 53-year-old Queens man who taught English as a second language was handcuffed by MTA police at Grand Central Station last Sunday after a vigilante group says he arrived expecting to meet a 13-year-old boy he had been messaging on Grindr. Daniel V. Rodriguez was confronted under the station's iconic clock by members of Dads Against Predators, who recorded the encounter before alerting police.
The confrontation was first detailed in a Susan B. Edelman report, which lays out how Rodriguez allegedly reached out to a decoy using the Grindr profile name Top In Queens and listed his age as 36. The decoy, posing as a teen named Trey, told him, “Technically, I'm 13. I'm about to be 14,” according to the same account. Rodriguez allegedly continued the conversation anyway, later sending three photos of a nude, erect penis, according to the Manhattan DA's office as cited in the report, and texting, “I just want to make sure you're going to be into this. I am trying to raw dog it.”
Rodriguez allegedly arranged to meet Trey under the clock at Grand Central on September 27. That is where John Dorsey, a Manhattan member of Dads Against Predators, stepped in front of him and said, “Dan, it's all over,” while he and group founder Joshua Mundy videotaped the exchange. On camera, Rodriguez reportedly said he reached out “because I was lonely” and insisted, “I was hoping to find somebody nice,” denying he was searching only for children.
From Confrontation to Arraignment
Dads Against Predators, the group behind the confrontation, describes itself as a national vigilante organization that has sparked the arrests of hundreds of suspected child molesters, per the same account. After the on-camera confrontation, the group alerted MTA police, who handcuffed Rodriguez, confiscated his phone, and charged him with third-degree attempted rape, a felony, along with attempted endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.
Rodriguez was arraigned the following day, September 28, pleaded not guilty, and was released on his own recognizance. Under New York's 2019 bail reform framework, third-degree attempted rape is a non-bail-eligible Class E felony, meaning judges generally must release defendants on their own recognizance or under non-monetary conditions absent specific statutory exceptions, according to the Center for Justice Innovation. He is due back in court on November 24. Asked for comment, Rodriguez reportedly told the outlet, “I need to consult with my lawyer first. I will let you know when I'm ready. Sorry.”
A Temp Role at a Queens Nonprofit
Rodriguez had worked as a temporary ESL instructor at Sunnyside Community Services, a Queens nonprofit that serves roughly 14,000 residents a year through early childhood education, youth after-school care, senior services, and home health aide training, according to the organization's own program listings. The nonprofit runs on a $16 million budget funded heavily by government grants, per Sunnyside Community Services' own disclosures.
The organization described Rodriguez as a former temp employee who no longer works there and said he did not work in its youth programs, noting that youth-program staff undergo extensive background checks and clearance. Records cited in the report show Rodriguez was certified by the New York State Education Department as a pre-K to grade 6 teacher in September 1998, a certification that expired in August 2003. He later worked as an elementary and middle school teacher in China, Vietnam, and Kuwait, holding teaching jobs from 2015 to 2024 and listing nearly nine years of teaching across those three countries, along with past positions at Zoni Language Centers, American Language Communication Center, CUNY's Hostos Community College, and the Harlem Center for Education.
Why Civilian Stings Face Legal Hurdles
Dads Against Predators was founded in Ohio in 2020 by Joshua Mundy and Jay Cameron Carnicom after a personal experience with child exploitation pushed them toward creating online decoy profiles for recorded confrontations, according to the group's Wikipedia entry. The tactic has drawn scrutiny from law enforcement almost since the group's inception. In October 2020, Sandusky County, Ohio officials, including the county sheriff and prosecutor, publicly threatened Dads Against Predators with criminal prosecution, warning that civilian stings create hazardous situations and often produce evidence that cannot hold up in court, according to the Toledo Blade. That same year, Sandusky County authorities confirmed at least two men died by suicide shortly after the group posted videos of confrontations with them, and co-founder Carnicom was shot during a separate 2022 confrontation in North Carolina.
The evidentiary problems have continued to surface elsewhere. In September, district attorneys in Pennsylvania said they could not prosecute individuals caught in civilian predator stings, citing state unlawful-contact statutes that contain no provisions authorizing evidence gathered by non-law-enforcement decoys, as Hoodline previously reported. Prosecutors there noted that civilian teams simply lack the legal authority to conduct formal criminal investigations.
Dads Against Predators is also facing its own legal exposure. On September 27, a former corporate executive filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the group in the Western District of Texas, alleging members assaulted him at an Austin grocery store and attempted to extort $400,000 from him following an online sting, Hoodline reported in its coverage of the federal complaint. That lawsuit accuses the group of using online dating app decoys to orchestrate physical ambushes, a tactic the complaint says mirrors how decoys explicitly state minor ages in chat logs before alerting team members on site.
Police responses to these civilian operations vary widely by jurisdiction. In Delray Beach, Florida, officers responded directly to a group called 561 Predator Catcher after it alerted them to a suspect who showed up at a pizzeria in March, resulting in an arrest, Hoodline previously reported. That case illustrates how some departments work alongside civilian decoy teams even as others, like those in Ohio and Pennsylvania, have pushed back against the practice entirely.
The Grand Central case also lands amid a broader federal push against online child exploitation. In August, federal prosecutors in Oklahoma charged 38 individuals and separated 21 children from dangerous environments as part of Operation Clean Sweep III, a multi-agency crackdown relying on structured law enforcement task forces rather than civilian decoys, Hoodline reported at the time.
