Type to search

Crime

Daniel Jenkins, Texas Man Who Lured Assault Victims with Grindr, Sentenced To 23 Years for Hate Crime

Share

Daniel Jenkins, the Texas man who plead guilty to charges stemming from a scheme that targeted gay men on the dating app Grindr, was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for violent hate crimes Thursday.

The New York Times: “This defendant targeted innocent victims for violent crimes simply because he believed they were gay,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the statement. She added that the sentence “underscores the Justice Department’s commitment to aggressively prosecuting bias-motivated crimes, including crimes against the L.G.B.T.Q.I. community.”

Heath Hyde, a lawyer for Mr. Jenkins, said on Thursday that his client had been “charged with a very serious crime.”

“As a result,” he said, “there was a plea agreement reached that we felt was fair, and it was because he was potentially looking at a life sentence.”

According to court documents: Jenkins admitted that he and his co-conspirators used Grindr to lure gay men to a vacant apartment and other areas in and around Dallas for robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, and hate crimes over the course of approximately a week in December 2017.

Jenkins admitted that he and his co-conspirators held victims against their will; pointed a handgun at victims and took their personal property, including their vehicles; and traveled to local ATMs to withdraw cash from the victims’ accounts.

He also admitted  he and his co-conspirators physically injured at least one victim and taunted the victims based upon the co-conspirators’ perception of the men’s sexual orientation.

Grindr is one of several dating apps that have grown in popularity among L.G.B.T.Q. users and have helped redefined the way they meet. Released in 2009, Grindr is a location-based app that tells its millions of users worldwide how far they are from one another.

In a statement on Thursday, Grindr said that it was “always saddened to hear about the difficult and sometimes tragic experiences that our community members have experienced both online and off.”

The company added that it encouraged its users “to be careful when interacting with people they do not know.”

In its safety guidelines, the company suggests that if someone wants to meet another user of the app, “do so in public first, at a safe space like an L.G.B.T.Q.+ friendly cafe, and be careful about what possessions you take with you.”

Tags:

You Might also Like