Innocent man spent 18 months in jail over a Skyrim username

A man spent as much as 18 months in prison just because of a police mistake after they misread his Skyrim username.

A man from Canada named Brandon Klayme spent as much as 18 months in prison after being wrongly convicted of several very serious criminal offenses, and the entire investigation started because of an unbelievable mistake by the police when reading a Skyrim username. Klayme has now officially been declared innocent after it was discovered that investigators had been following the completely wrong person from the beginning who was not guilty at all.

This case started back in 2018, when police were investigating an adult man who contacted a twelve-year-old girl through the Kik app. The suspect then used a username that reads "fus__ro_dah" which was inspired by the famous Fus Ro Dah shout from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

However, the police made a huge mistake when requesting data from Kik, and instead of two underscores they wrote only one "fus_ro_dah". Kik therefore provided data belonging to a completely different person, a man from Canada named Brandon Klayme.

The police then connected his IP address to an address in Halifax and searched his house and devices. But the problem comes when they did not find any evidence connecting him to any crime they were looking for. Investigators could not even confirm that Klayme used Kik during the period in which the events actually took place.

Even despite this, Klayme was still arrested and convicted in 2024, after which he was sent to prison where he spent a full 18 months.

Brandon Klayme spent 18 months in prison because of one wrongly entered underscore in a Skyrim username.

The police were looking for "fus__ro_dah", but mistakenly checked "fus_ro_dah", which led to the arrest and conviction of a completely innocent man. The court finally declared him effectively innocent this year.