Long Island couple hunts child predators, one sting at a time

Mike Villiani and Emily Hoenscheid have turned vigilante justice into a full-time operation

When Mike Villiani approached a Shoreham-Wading River music teacher this week outside the school where he works, he wasn’t acting on a hunch.

He was already armed with days of messages, screenshots and a recorded phone call. All evidence, he said, of explicit conversations with someone the educator believed was a 13-year-old girl.

“There’s not a doubt in my mind how guilty he is,” Villiani told Greater Long Island, hours after the Wading River School educator was removed from his position following the sting operation. “I know the stuff he was saying and the stuff he was asking for.”

Villiani operates Predator Poachers Long Island, a vigilante-type group that video records and shares online stings aimed at exposing adults attempting to meet up with minors. The teacher — a married father from Islip — is the group’s latest “catch.”

Mark Verity, who has taught music and directed numerous school plays at Wading River School, was arrested Friday by Suffolk Police Islip for engaging in sexually explicit communications with a purported 13-year-old girl.

According to Villiani, the veteran teacher asked for explicit images from the decoy multiple times, discussed scenarios of them meeting up, and described in detail the sexual acts he and the decoy teen would engage in.

The Wednesday confrontation, conducted alongside Predator Poachers founder Alex Rosen, resulted in swift admissions from Verity, who was recorded confessing to possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material.

After seeing the video, school district officials removed the instructor from the classroom indefinitely while Suffolk Police investigated the matter. Verity — recorded telling Villiani he is married and has a child with his wife, as well as a step-child — has been instructed by his employer not to set foot on school property.

The encounter has thrust Villiani and his girlfriend and work partner Emily Hoenscheid into the spotlight —and raised awareness about the growing role of civilian “catchers” in combating online predators.

They said they’ve made 47 catches across nine states, with arrests in four states and Canada — with a boatload of videos posted online to prove it.

“We’ve got to the point where we can do this full time,” Villiani explained.

The operation, funded by YouTube advertising and donations, maintains a roughly 50% arrest rate, with nearly 20 individuals either arrested or indicted based on their investigations, they said.

On Long Island alone, they’ve conducted about 20 catches, resulting in two guilty pleas in Nassau County and three grand jury indictments in Suffolk, they said.

The numbers speak to both their persistence and the scope of the problem they’re tackling.

When Villiani responded, posing as a 13-year-old girl, the conversation soon turned explicit, he said.

“[Verity] kept the conversation going immediately with no hesitation,” said Villiani, who utilized images from the Predator Poachers network while texting back and forth with the teacher.

Several details raised red flags, Villiani said. Verity allegedly asked what school district the supposed child attended and other unique phrasing that hinted to Villiani that he was someone working in education.

When the educator eventually allegedly sent a face photo, Villiani’s network deployed facial recognition technology to identify him.

“We realized exactly who he was,” Villiani said.

In the “catch” videos, Villiani approaches targets —typically at their homes or in some cases outside of work — with friendly chatter and a nonchalant demeanor. Wearing a microphone, he briefly informs the subject that the interview is being recorded “for safety purposes” and gestures toward the camera held by Hoenscheid, who films everything from their car.

The targets often capitulate quickly, acknowledging what they’ve done soon after Villiani begins speaking. In some instances, their wives or significant others are present.

The excuses are predictable: they would “never follow through” with what they described in texts or phone calls to the child-aged decoy, or this is “the first time” they’ve ever done something like this.

“[Villiani] really tries to befriend them,” Hoenscheid said. “He’s very good at diffusing the situation, and then it makes them feel comfy.”

Staying soft but assertive in his conversational approach, Villiani is persistent in getting targets to address the specifics of the inappropriate texting and sexting they’ve allegedly engaged in with teen decoys.

At Villiani’s behest, the targets almost always promise this will be the last time they do this. And it’s at that point that police officers appear in the videos.

Villiani then updates the authorities on the situation, with the target present and sometimes crying or with their head buried in their hands. He hands over any pertinent evidence, and then retreats to his car where he and Hoenscheid, often gleefully, continue to record the caught target’s interaction with the cops.

Villiani believes the suspects’ guilty consciences drive them to confess.

“Holding in secrets like that is very painful, I imagine,” he said. “They want me to feel for them. They’re hoping I’ll just let it go.”

The strategy works. In the music teacher case, the man “spilled everything” without resistance, Villiani said. The conversation grew more disturbing when they brought up a second messaging app used by the teacher, this one an encrypted messaging app where child sexual abuse material is frequently shared, Villiani said.

“It was worse than I thought,” Villiani said. “I figured it was bad, but it was definitely even worse.”

Nearly every suspect claims it’s their first time. It’s a line Villiani no longer believes.

“At this point, that is one of the most infuriating things I could hear,” he said. “But I still try to keep my cool.”

“He’s a monster,” Villiani said flatly.

Yet for all the disturbing content he encounters, Villiani maintains he’s rarely afraid during confrontations.

“These guys are more scared of me than I am of them,” he explained.

Still, he operates with an alias (“Douglas King Jr.”) and takes other necessary precautions.

“You never know with these guys,” he said.

“The stuff like the Jeffrey Epstein thing—realizing how severe this problem is,” he said. “People who define our reality and our culture are engaging in this stuff… The best thing you can do is try to combat it in whatever way you can.”

He believes targeting individuals who might facilitate abuse or prey on local children serves an important purpose.

“It’s something that deeply affects local communities,” he said, citing recent Long Island cases including a 14-year-old girl from Patchogue who was sex trafficked to several individuals and eventually found on a yacht docked in Islip after she had been missing for nearly a month.

“If we coordinate with law enforcement, we unfortunately have to do the same red tape that they do,” he explained. “It’s a better situation all around.”

The approach has yielded results in some jurisdictions— particularly Suffolk County, which Villiani praised— but not all.

“Sometimes it takes longer too, if there’s more to investigate beyond what we provide to them,” he said.

Even when arrests don’t immediately follow, Villiani believes the public exposure serves a purpose. The Bangor sex offender’s video has garnered over 100,000 views —and with it, Villiani suspects, significant public torment.

“I think we have numbers on our side,” he said.

The human cost

Villiani and Hoenscheid know this: The individuals they’re “catching” do not represent abstract threats or distant dangers. They’re neighbors, teachers, family men — people embedded in Long Island communities.

The couple is already moving on to the next case. At their current pace of eight to 10 catches per month, there’s little time to dwell on any single predator.

For Villiani and Hoenscheid, every confrontation, every catch, every arrest represents a child who might not become a victim. In a world where predators operate openly on unregulated platforms, where the problem seems overwhelming and systemic, Villiani and Hoenscheid have found something they can actually do about it.

Even if it means spending their days in the darkest corners of the internet, even if it means absorbing conversations no one should have to read, even if it means confronting dangerous people in parking lots —they’ve decided it’s worth it.

“Thank God,” Villiani said of the music teacher Verity’s arrest. “This is why we do what we do.”

Top images: inset, Mike Villiani and Emily Hoenscheid of PPLI (courtesy photo) and main, YouTube still (PPLI).

Prior coverage

Shoreham-Wading River music teacher banned from school grounds amid investigation