Shortly before cocktails flowed at a reception for guests beneath a tent housing the plane in a Miami Beach park, Archer informed the news media that it had sued Vertical in a Texas federal court for alleged patent infringements.

“Archer brings this suit to protect the novel and award-winning design of its Midnight eVTOL, which was developed by Archer inventors through careful, brilliant design work, and to stop Vertical infringing its patented designs,” the suit declared.

Vertical executives scrambled to issue a statement denying the allegations.

“There is no bigger form of flattery when people try and do this to us,”  Vertical CEO Stuart Simpson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview delayed by the litigation interlude. “It’s a pure distraction tactic.”

Whatever is decided in court, it is now clear that the nascent electric air taxi industry is emerging from an early development stage to an era of a high-stakes competition. Billions in investor dollars are at stake, and at the local, state and federal government levels, advocates say expedited action is needed to assess aircraft developed by companies worldwide for certification and to make way for a new mode of urban transportation at public airports and privately run “vertiports” in South Florida and elsewhere.

Last December, Archer took its turn at a public introduction with a debut of its six-engine “Midnight” at an old Pan American World Airways hangar in Miami’s Coconut Grove. It also announced a detailed South Florida route system that would include landing locations at several public airports, as well as at vertiports built and/or controlled by developers including billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross.

Precisely when those proposals will become reality is difficult to calculate. A spokesperson for Archer, which is based in California, reaffirmed last week that the company plans “to begin operating Midnight this year as part of the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP).” The company said it has “submitted applications across California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, and New York.”

The eVTOL program, which is among several pilot programs launched by the FAA and U.S. Department of Transportation, was triggered by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last summer. The idea is to “accelerate the deployment of advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles,” the FAA has said, asserting that the new technologies “have the potential to transform aviation, including expanding connectivity to rural American communities, reducing road congestion in urban areas, and enhancing emergency services or medical transport.”

The program would establish “public-private partnerships with state and local government entities and private sector companies to develop new frameworks and regulations for enabling safe operations,” the agency added.

And then will paying passengers begin to fly?

“People try to guess when it will happen,” said Kevin Adkins, professor of aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. “I try to stay away from that. There are a lot of moving pieces here.”

Support preparations by players ranging from federal regulators to local airport operators are starkly uneven, Some would like to see decisions made much sooner than later.

“This industry is ripe with investment, it’s ripe with innovation, and it’s ripe with competition where businesses are looking to bring their aircraft to various markets,” said Kevin Cox, CEO of Vertiports by Atlantic, which has national ambitions of being part of the business, including in South Florida. “These aircraft can be transformational and we believe they will be, but they’re not transformational unless you have the infrastructure to support them.”

In Congress last month, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to speed up the FAA certifications of aircraft that manufacturers say have been tested and are ready to fly. Last year, Trump signed a batch of executive orders to activate the industry and get the taxis airborne faster.

In Florida, the state has shown strong support, with the Department of Transportation offering test sites for aircraft in the central part of the state.

The Valo aircraft

Generally speaking, the flying machines manufactured by Archer, Vertical, Joby Aviation, and Beta Technologies, among others, look and operate similarly. Powered by batteries, they can carry between four to six passengers, depending on the model, and are operated by a single pilot. Multiple engines attached to the wings swivel into vertical and horizontal positions to accommodate a lift like a helicopter and provide forward movement.

During his Miami Beach visit, Simpson said the Vertical Aerospace version can be configured to carry six passengers. He also noted there is a barrier between passengers and pilots in the cabin for security purposes. It’s a feature, he said, that is not lost on the airlines, including American Airlines, which became a partner in 2021 and is considered by Simpson to be a launch customer.

“There is a need for a product like this given the infrastructure challenges,” Simpson said. “There are so many people who have moved to South Florida. We met some politicians around here and they really, really want to engage and make this happen. They can see how it would transform the lives of people in South Florida.”

The company, unlike Archer, does not intend to be an operator of the aircraft it makes.

South Florida operator goes ‘conventional’

Ed Wegel is a veteran South Florida aviation executive with an idea similar to Archer’s: to lay out a network of cities that would serve tourists, travelers and businesspeople who need to get from one city to another quickly.

But his company, UrbanLink Air Mobility, is not ordering planes from either Vertical or Archer. He’s leasing 10 “conventional” electric aircraft (eCTOLs) from Beta Technologies of Vermont that can land and take off along airport runways like a traditional plane. The first deliveries will come in late 2027.

UrbanLink envisions a network that includes all three South Florida international airports, as well as Tampa, Jupiter, Key West, Marathon and even Bimini in the Bahamas. The company is also looking toward the Orlando area and Sebring, where it believes it could base a number of its aircraft.

The projected price for a West Palm Beach to Miami flight: $125, which beats a widely quoted $250 price for a 75-mile luxury car trip with Uber Black.

The first electric air taxi services, Wegel believes, will be landing and taking off at airports with their conventional runways, not at vertiports.

“We think that with vertiport developments you’d have to go through FAA approvals, community hearings, and community comments,” Wegel said. “You just can’t put a vertiport in the middle of a community somewhere.”

High demand potential

Adkins, who brought 22 students and four Embry-Riddle faculty members to Miami Beach on Feb. 24 to view the Vertical Aerospace aircraft, said there is a case to be made for heavy demand in both South and Central Florida.

There are plenty of airports in both regions for the operators to use, he said. “Florida in general has a lot of attractive attributes. Up here closer to the Orlando area has a natural hub and spoke system.”

“There would be a lot of demand,” he added, particularly “from people who want to get off the clogged expressways.”

Airports, vertiports

“Those FBO sites obviously today serve traditional aviation,” said Cox of Vertiports by Atlantic.

“We want to make sure we are doing it at sites and locations likely to be first-to-market and allow this form of transportation to [be brought to] scale,” he said.

Although UrbanLink and Archer have announced definitive South Florida route networks that include the region’s big international airports, there is scant evidence of any tangible ground-level developments that would lead travelers to believe that flights by electric taxis are imminent.

In Broward County, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International is evaluating the integration of a vertiport into a broader intermodal project at the eastern end of the airport. But there is no immediate time frame.

“Electric vertical take-off and landing/advanced air mobility/vertiport capabilities will be reviewed and evaluated as part of the design process for the proposed new eight-level Intermodal Center for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport,” spokeswoman Arlene Satchell said in an email.

In Boca Raton, the city’s airport authority last December reportedly heard from a consultant about Archer’s plans in the region.

But the authority is in the study stage and has no immediate plans to start any taxi operations, Executive Director Clara Bennett said in an email.

She said a feasibility and planning study of the Advanced Air Mobility industry is under way “to better understand how emerging electric vertical takeoff and landing [eVTOL] technologies could potentially integrate into the airport environment in the future.”

She said the authority wants to know about demand for services in the South Florida market, as well as “possible use cases for electric air taxi operations, and the types of infrastructure that could be required to support those operations over time. The effort also includes a preliminary review of potential facility siting concepts, compatibility with existing airport operations, and alignment with evolving FAA guidance and vertiport design standards.”

“Because the AAM sector is still in the certification and early deployment phase, the Authority’s focus at this time is on thoughtful, long-range planning rather than near-term implementation,” Bennett added.

The Palm Beach International Airport and the City of Fort Lauderdale, which owns Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, did not provide information by publication deadline.

The ‘end game:’ No pilots

The long-term, meanwhile, holds a possibility that that may or may not attract widespread public support.

“The end game here is more autonomous operations,” said Adkins of Embry Riddle, citing a shortage of pilots and air traffic controllers, as well as the rising cost of labor to employ them.

Last year, the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, overseer of Miami International Airport and two smaller airports in the county, entered into agreements with the University of Miami and Wisk Aero, developer of self-flying air taxis, to explore steps toward autonomous flying.

The idea is to identify vertiport sites for the international airport, Miami Executive Airport and Miami-Opa locka Executive Airport to enable Wisk to start operations.

“We’re short pilots right now,” Adkins said. “They’re expensive. They’re going to drive up the price point.”

“For this system to be realized anywhere near its full potential, automation is important,” he added. “Community acceptance is going to be a huge piece.”

This article was updated after publication to remove a photo from Beta Technologies related to an UrbanLink air taxi service.

The sonorous presence of actor Morgan Freeman will be one of the highlights of the Beatles on the Beach festival in Boca Raton on March 12-15, which will include a March 14 performance by Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience.

As suggested by its name, the actor and ensemble tour the country to share new treatments of music from the Mississippi Delta and 100 years of storytelling tradition heard in the songs of Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and others.

The band is accompanied by symphony orchestra musicians under the direction of Vienna-based composer and conductor Martin Gellner. At Beatles on the Beach, local orchestra musicians will be joined by students from Lynn University.

Freeman grew up near the blues mecca of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he is a co-owner of the Ground Zero Blues Club, the space where the idea of mixing the blues and orchestral music first took flight. Last summer Freeman and his partners decided to take these experiments by the Ground Zero house band on the road, sharing stages with the San Francisco Symphony, the Nashville Symphony and at the famed Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony.

Calling the blues “America’s only real classical music,” Freeman, 88, admits he was a latecomer to the music, not taking it seriously until he was an adult.

“I knew about the blues. I sang along with everybody else when we sang the blues, but I was not particularly involved with it, or even enamored of the blues. I had rock ’n’ roll,” he says.

Freeman serves as an omniscient narrator for performances by the Symphonic Blues Experience, sharing history, introducing characters, providing cultural context for the music and its influence. The concert is performed against a backdrop of video and photography, including family pictures and material from the Library of Congress, that illustrates specific historic and musical themes.

A Tampa Bay Times review of a concert in St. Petersburg last September said the band and members of the Florida Orchestra turned the 2,000-seat Mahaffey Theater into a swaying juke joint: “Though the lush, swelling harmonies from the orchestra provided a cinematic layer to the performance, it was hard at times to focus on anything but Freeman’s crew of Mississippi musicians as they wailed, shredded and grooved along.”

Freeman is still a working actor, and due to scheduling conflicts some concerts have shown him only on video — but his Boca Raton appearance will be in person.

A typical set list will trace the blues from its foundation as a chronicle of shared social and economic struggle, to its ongoing effect on rock, soul and hip-hop. Shows have included Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues” (also covered by Led Zeppelin), the Staple Singers’ hit “I’ll Take You There” and “I Lied to You,” the Oscar-nominated song co-written by Raphael Saadiq for the “Sinners” movie soundtrack.

“I’m quite satisfied, because it does add an awful lot to have this plotting going on,” Freeman says. “It’s so unique.”

Beatles on the Beach founder Daniel Hartwell attended the concert in St. Petersburg and came away convinced that a band of such cultural significance as the Beatles was deserving of Freeman’s majestic intonation.

“They are a genre of music on their own. In 200 years we will still be listening to Beethoven and the Beatles,” Hartwell says.

The Beatles are no strangers to the blues — illustrated on “Yer Blues” from the White Album, and “Let It Be” album tracks “Don’t Let Me Down” and “For You Blue” — but Freeman declined to predict what songs the Symphonic Blues Experience has queued up for Beatles on the Beach.

While saying he wanted to maintain an element of surprise for the festival audience, he did express a fondness for “Hey Jude.” Then he playfully broke into song.

“Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs …” he sang, Paul McCartney’s Wings hit never sounding so heavenly.

Freeman understands the effect his voice can have — thanks to the film “Bruce Almighty” and its sequel, “Evan Almighty” — but reminds the listener that it was merely a role to be played.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to attach God to a person. It was just, you know, it was a joke. It was a fun time, not anything serious, right?” he says.

Freeman also traveled the globe during three seasons of the National Geographic documentary series “The Story of God,” speaking with spiritual leaders, scientists, historians and archaeologists about the influence of religion. The show took him to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, India’s Bodhi Tree, Mayan temples in Guatemala, the pyramids of Egypt and the banks of the Ganges River.

“Do you want to know what I learned?” Freeman asks. “It’s all true. Every religion has a story that explains the beginning, the beginning of life, the beginning of Earth itself. Every religion can explain it to you. And it’s all true. That’s all I gotta say.”

If you go

WHAT: Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience at Beatles on the Beach

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, March 14; gates open at 3 p.m.

WHERE: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton

COST: $44.70+ for general admission standing room (BYO chair), or $60.65+ for seats, at Ticketmaster.com

INFORMATION: BeatlesOnTheBeach.com

Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on IG: @BenCrandell.

Instead, the man was confronted by an MMA fighter, a Russian YouTuber and their camera-carrying entourage, who were livestreaming the interaction to thousands of viewers online.

The 50-year-old did not appear surprised. He recognized the fighter, Dustin Lampros, from his videos.

“Oh,” he said, laughing, “you got me.”

The man was placed under arrest by Delray Beach Police and taken to the Palm Beach County jail. That was only the first arrest of the evening. Over the next three days, Lampros and Vitaly Zdorovetskiy recorded back-to-back confrontations with nearly a dozen other people from throughout South Florida, all of whom, they said, had traveled to either Delray Beach or Boynton Beach for the purpose of meeting children.

“There’s no better feeling, chat,” Lampros, wearing one of his “561 Predator Catchers” shirts and joggers, told viewers. “There’s no better feeling than getting a grown adult locked up that is coming to meet a kid for sex. There’s nothing more fulfilling. This is what life’s about. Protecting the children and serving.”

The men were doing the first of multiple collaborative streams in Lampros’ stomping grounds of Delray Beach. Both are “predator catchers,” or content creators who use “decoys” to chat with adults online while posing as minors, then arrange meetings in supermarkets and fast food restaurants. There, they record themselves confronting and questioning the accused pedophiles until the police arrive.

Around the world, predator catching has flourished since the popularity of the 2000s hit “To Catch a Predator,” fueled by social media algorithms, distrust of the justice system and an epidemic of child exploitation online, experts say.

And in Palm Beach County, where prosecutors and police have sought to publicly distance themselves from the predator catchers, Lampros’ group has become the dominant force behind arrests and prosecutions under the state’s “traveling to meet a minor” statute, court records show. Calls from his team, 561 Predator Catchers, which focuses on Delray Beach and its surrounding area, have led to approximately 40 arrests in the county since it started in 2022, records show, outnumbering arrests by police acting alone under the same statute. Their “catches” include multiple local teachers, a campus safety officer, a rabbi who tutors children, and, most recently, a Miami-Dade police lieutenant. Several have already led to convictions, with one resulting in a nine-year sentence.

The predator catchers have also attracted controversy. Some, like Zdorovetskiy, have been accused of assaulting and humiliating their targets as viewers push for violence. Even the more restrained Lampros is facing criticism from local attorneys and law enforcement who say his group’s tactics violate constitutional rights and jeopardize legitimate investigations. 561 Predator Catchers now appears in so many Palm Beach County prosecutions that several defense attorneys have formed a group to share discovery materials across the cases, according to a recent court filing.

But Lampros says that the work his team is doing has only revealed a pervasive problem that law enforcement alone is not solving. Nationally, experts have said that police no longer proactively conduct undercover operations as frequently due to limited resources.

“We’re actually exposing a hole in the system down here,” Lampros told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “They don’t have enough resources to do it like we’re doing it.”

The predator-catching formula

An MMA fighter with the nickname “Scrappy,” Lampros moved to South Florida from Illinois 11 years ago. He started 561 Predator Catchers in 2022 with his friend, Ryan Montgomery, who was already working with predator catchers across the country. Montgomery later left the group, but Lampros stuck with it, and the channel has grown steadily. He works with the assistance of multiple “decoys” around the country and a cameraman.

The group’s Instagram bio reads, “trying to make South Florida a better place by catching one child predator at a time.” It encourages people to donate via CashApp. Defense attorneys have estimated that members of the 561 Predator Catchers team have each individually brought in at least $50,000 from the videos, though they “believe the amount is far higher,” according to court filings.

“I wish,” Lampros told the Sun Sentinel when asked about the figure, though he declined to share how much money he makes from his content. He emphasized that his objective is to protect children, not financial gain; for the first several months, he said, he didn’t publish any videos of the catches. His childhood best friend was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of their school principal for two years, he said, before the principal killed himself, which makes the issue especially personal to him.

The group’s videos follow a formula similar to Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator”. Lampros employs a “decoy” to chat with potential predators on websites like Grindr, Whisper and MeetMe. Some decoys appear young; others use AI to make their photos look younger. During the conversation, the decoy will reveal that he or she is underage, but the predator will agree to meet anyway.

Lampros then confronts his targets, telling them that he and his team “monitor online activity between minors and adults” but that he won’t call the police as long as they talk to him openly. He does not tell them that he has already called the police and officers are on their way. In nearly all of the videos, the accused predator agrees to talk at length about his or her reasons for showing up that day (while the vast majority are men, women have also appeared in Lampros’ videos). Often, they admit that they were trying to meet with someone underage, though some deny that they would have gone through with anything sexual. Some have brought condoms and sex toys to the meet-ups.

In many chat logs documented in police reports, the accused predators appear fully aware and excited about the prospect of meeting children.

“I’d teach u about sex,” wrote one 43-year-old Palm Beach Gardens man, who thought he was messaging a 13-year-old girl, according to a probable cause affidavit, later asking her if she has had her period. When deputies searched his phone, they found hundreds of images and videos of child pornography.

Other stings by Lampros have similarly led police to evidence of further crimes, police reports show. One man, a transient resident of West Palm Beach, was revealed to have failed to register as a sex offender; a search of another’s phone found that he had a sexual relationship with a girl when she was 17 and he was 32. When Boynton Beach Police contacted the girl, she said she wanted to pursue charges.

Sometimes Lampros leans more heavily into alternative forms of punishment. He has confronted accused predators at their homes, in front of their spouses. In one video, he ordered a man to call his wife on the phone and tell her what he had done as well as perform push-ups and sit-ups.

“Let me see the predator push-ups,” Lampros told the man as he knelt to the ground in front of his house. Later, as the man began doing sit-ups, Lampros said, “Repeat: I’m not gonna talk to kids ever again.”

“I’m not gonna talk to kids ever again,” the man said.

A controversial figure

Lampros’ approach is tame compared to Zdorovetskiy’s.

The YouTuber emigrated to the U.S. from Russia and has traveled the world performing pranks and publicity stunts alongside predator-catching videos, amassing over 10 million subscribers. He was detained for months until January of this year after his pranks in the Philippines led authorities to arrest him and declare him an “undesirable alien,” according to the country’s Bureau of Immigration.

Prior to his arrest, he was known for controversial videos targeting alleged predators in South Florida. In one video, he shaved a man’s eyebrows, saying “this is what you do to pedos.” For another, he and his group posed as a 15-year-old boy and pressured a man to meet at an apartment in Miami-Dade County before surprising him with a live alligator and telling him he would have to fight it, according to a 2024 memo from prosecutors.

Police arrested the man, but the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office declined to file charges, citing “evidentiary problems” linked to the tactics of Zdorovetskiy’s group, including the fact that the defendant’s comments were made under duress due to the threat of the alligator. They wrote that, should the case proceed to trial, “the Defendant would come off as unusually sympathetic.”

Off camera, Zdorovetskiy’s criminal record includes a 2020 arrest on charges of violently beating a female jogger in Miami Beach, an assault which required stitches. Prosecutors dropped the charges after he participated in a deferred prosecution program.

Streaming with Lampros over Valentine’s Day weekend, Zdorovetskiy toned down his behavior but still toyed with the men the group caught. He asked the first accused predator if he was a citizen, and then, upon learning he was Puerto Rican, questioned if he was related to Bad Bunny. During another confrontation at a McDonald’s, he put a dildo confiscated from the accused predator on his forehead.

Zdorovetskiy did not return voicemails or texts left by a reporter.

Some of the streamer’s viewers, used to his more aggressive antics, were disappointed by the relative lack of excitement.

“this is getting boring vitaly can you cut their hair and do crazy shit make them eat dog food,” one person wrote. While the two were questioning an alleged predator, others wrote, “MAKE HIM CRY BREAK HIM DOWN” and “BOX THIS FAT BASTARD.”

Several of Lampros’ viewers criticized his recent decision to collaborate with Zdorovetskiy given the latter’s history. But Lampros said that he agreed to the collaboration to have more control over the situation since the YouTuber was already planning to film videos in the same area.

“People should be more concerned about the people we caught than the people I catch with,” he told the Sun Sentinel.

Other viewers have urged Lampros to be less restrained.

“More violence please,” one commenter wrote on recent Instagram post.

This past weekend, the two men joined forces again in Delray Beach.

‘This is gonna go so wrong’

Fort Lauderdale defense attorney Adam Rossen hadn’t heard of predator catchers until a couple of weeks ago, when he got a flurry of calls from prospective clients. He started watching Zdorovetskiy’s videos.

“Me and my attorneys are sitting there going oh, no, no, no,” Rossen, who is currently representing two accused predators who have not been arrested, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “This is gonna go so wrong eventually. It’s just a matter of time.”

Defense attorneys and law enforcement experts say the encounters are unpredictable and dangerous, especially for the decoys, who often meet with the alleged predator before the cameras arrive. In the recent sting involving the Miami-Dade lieutenant, a decoy posing as a 15-year-old girl told police that he touched her chest without her consent prior to the arrival of the predator catchers, according to a report.

Multiple people stopped by Lampros and Zdorovetskiy were carrying guns, according to police reports. Nationally, multiple people caught in predator-catching operations have died by suicide.

There are also due process issues. When law enforcement officers conduct undercover stings, they must be careful not to entrap defendants by inducing them to commit an act they wouldn’t have otherwise committed, such as by pressuring someone to meet for sex. Entrapment applies to law enforcement, not civilians, but it can apply if civilians are operating as an extension of the government under what is known as the state actor doctrine.

Police regularly use evidence supplied by the catchers to support search warrants and arrests, including chat logs and recorded phone calls, records show. But the chat conversations could be edited, legal experts say, while the phone call recordings could run afoul of Florida’s two-party consent law.

Rocky Brancato, a Tampa-based defense attorney who specializes in sex crimes and has reviewed Lampros’ videos, said he believes his relationship to the police would designate him as a state actor.

“The police know what’s going on,” he said. “They’re allowing it to happen.”

Relationship to police

Since Lampros’ group began in 2022, the majority of all arrests in Palm Beach County under Florida’s “traveling to meet a minor” statute came out of Delray Beach Police responding to his calls, records show.

In 2024, calls from Lampros’ team led to 20 of 22 total arrests under the statute that year, records show, 19 of which were made by Delray Beach Police.

Asked about the predator catchers’ relationship to Delray Beach Police, spokesperson Ted White told the Sun Sentinel, “They’re doing their own thing. They’re their own thing, they don’t collaborate with us in any way, form or fashion. They basically just call us when they’re at a certain point where they believe police need to intervene.”

White did not respond to follow-up questions about the police department’s resources for combatting child sex crimes or grant a Sun Sentinel request for an interview with someone in the sex crimes unit.

On camera last month, Lampros and Zdorovetskiy praised Delray Beach Police for their responsiveness. “Should I move to Delray?” Zdorovetskiy said at one point during the stream, following another arrest. “I don’t think the cops will ever get tired of this.”

Other agencies, they say, have not been as amenable to predator catching. Lampros has criticized Boca Raton specifically, saying officers told him not to call them again after he reported a catch leading to a conviction.

Boca Raton Police have had only two reported interactions with the group, records show. In one, a detective wrote that Lampros would not allow him to download the unedited video of a catch from his phone, though the man still ended up getting arrested and pleading guilty. In the other, Lampros called about an alleged predator at a Publix but, when asked to go to the police department to make a formal report, he “refused,” the police report says.

In response to questions about Lampros’ comments, Boca Raton Police spokesperson Jessica Desir said in a statement that “the Boca Raton Police Services Department has a Computer Crimes Unit dedicated to investigating these types of crimes. These investigations are often complex and require time to build a case that supports successful prosecution.”

Local police say they are well-equipped to handle child predator investigations and have encouraged predator catchers to report suspected offenders rather than confront them on camera. Several agencies, including Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, participate in the South Florida chapter of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, or ICAC, a national organization that provides funding for police efforts targeting child sex crimes, including undercover operations.

The task force, managed by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, has made 520 arrests in 2025 alone, according to Sgt. Thomas McInerney, who serves as the commander of the task force.

McInerney emphasized that his task force works directly with prosecutors and that investigators receive special training while adhering to strict standards regarding evidence. In contrast, he said, predator catchers may use tactics that prevent successful convictions such as selectively editing interactions with suspects, failing to preserve evidence properly, and engaging “in conversations that may support entrapment defenses.”

“I have personally communicated with members of several of these groups and encouraged them that, if their primary goal is protecting children and ensuring justice, they should immediately notify law enforcement upon identifying an individual attempting to exploit a child online,” McInerney told the Sun Sentinel in an email. “This allows trained investigators to assume the case, properly preserve evidence, plan a safe arrest, and pursue a successful prosecution. Unfortunately, some groups have chosen to continue conducting public confrontations and recording those encounters for social media distribution rather than properly communicating the information to law enforcement.”

But Lampros says that ICAC is not doing enough to combat the problem. As for entrapment, he is not a police officer, and even if he were, he doesn’t think that defense applies.

“You think if it goes to trial, a jury of the public is gonna say, ‘You know what, he said he wanted to have sex with the 14-year-old four times, but I don’t really think he was going to’?” he told the Sun Sentinel.

Over the last few years, child exploitation has surged online; a 2025 study found that one in 12 children worldwide have fallen victim to online child sexual exploitation or abuse. Nationally, some experts have argued that law enforcement lacks the resources to counter it.

“ICAC Task Forces throughout the United States used to regularly conduct undercover operations targeting offenders who traveled to meet and assault individuals they believed were 10- to 14-year-olds,” John Pizzuro, the retired commander of New Jersey’s chapter of ICAC, testified in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2023. “… Unfortunately, task forces are no longer able to perform these types of operations — they are resource intensive, and the volume of reactive cases prohibits it.”

Prosecutions

Dozens of cases spurred by predator catchers are now making their way through the court system, and many of them are succeeding. At least six stings led by Lampros have resulted in plea agreements in Palm Beach County, records show, with several convicted predators facing two-year sentences. At least 25 are ongoing.

In response, local defense attorneys have created a group to share discovery evidence amongst themselves due to the sheer number of cases involving Lampros, according to a January court filing. Some have begun asking for the YouTube videos of their clients to be removed.

“The ongoing publication and maintenance of YouTube videos by civilian ‘predator catcher’ groups, who are witnesses in this case, constitutes a form of extrajudicial conduct that creates a substantial and imminent threat to the administration of justice and the defendant’s right to a fair trial,” reads a motion filed by Brian Balaguera, a member of the defense attorney group.

Rossen was surprised to learn that a number of Lampros’ operations have already ended in convictions in Palm Beach County, not just because of due process issues but because those prosecutions would require the catchers to sit for depositions, motion hearings and trials.

“There’s so many constitutional and procedural issues when it’s done by a civilian like this,” he told the Sun Sentinel.

Lampros says he has sat for depositions and is often one of the lead witnesses, though none have gone to trial.

In response to questions over their decision to prosecute cases and the extent to which predator catchers are involved, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office told the Sun Sentinel in a statement that “successful child sex crimes prosecutions by our office are based on evidence that is properly collected during investigations by law enforcement agencies. Our office does not coordinate with or seek input from civilian ‘predator catcher’ groups concerning arrests, case filing decisions, plea negotiations, or sentencing recommendations. As always, each case is reviewed individually to determine whether there is enough evidence to prove the charges presented by law enforcement beyond a reasonable doubt.”

By comparison, both Broward and Miami-Dade have received and prosecuted only a handful of cases since 2022.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office said that it is reviewing three cases but has not otherwise received any or filed formal charges in recent years, save for one case in 2022 from a group known as Colorado Ped Control. The Broward Sheriff’s Office arrested a man last week after an operation of Zdorovetskiy’s; it is one of the three cases under review at the State Attorney’s Office.  

“We encourage anyone who believes they have information that could identify a child predator to report that information to law enforcement agency for investigation,” a spokesperson for the office told the Sun Sentinel in a statement, adding that there are “potential legal issues when individuals who are not in law enforcement engage in this behavior as they may end up violating the law and jeopardizing the ability to make an arrest or sustain the charges in court.”

A Miami-Dade prosecutor said in an email provided to the Sun Sentinel that the only case brought to the State Attorney’s Office in recent years was the one involving the alligator, which the office declined to pursue.

Stranger danger

To predator catchers and their viewers, a lack of support from prosecutors and police is only further evidence that a system designed to protect children cannot be trusted to do so.

The public’s fascination with child predators is not new. Beginning in the 1970s, fears spread across the United States that tens of thousands of children were being abducted by strangers each year, according to Paul Renfro, a history professor at Florida State University and author of “Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State.”

The statistics later proved to be exaggerated, Renfro said, but the concerns remained, bolstered by a series of disturbing, high-profile abductions, including the Hollywood abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh that thrust his father John Walsh into the spotlight.

The movement brought about new measures to protect children, such as sex offender registries, Renfro told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, but it also placed “the threat of child sexual exploitation outside of the home,” obscuring the reality that the majority of sexual abuse takes place in private, at the hands of people children are supposed to trust.

It continued into the 2000s with the success of “To Catch a Predator,” which popularized sting operations to nab suspected predators. Since then, other child exploitation-focused movements have gained a foothold, often characterized by a distrust of the justice system.

“There’s always kind of been this vigilantism embedded within the child safety movement,” Renfro said. “There’s this skepticism of law enforcement and this belief that law enforcement generally don’t care about what’s going on with children and aren’t interested in investigating these cases.”

Many members of the public view predator catchers as heroes for exposing people who might not otherwise face retribution. Some local viewers have offered Lampros’ group free services or meals.

“You’re a saint!” one commenter wrote on a recent video. “Us moms thank you for all you do!”

Christl Ramirez, a 36-year-old guardian ad litem and mother of two, discovered Lampros through her husband and quickly became a devoted fan. When she was 12 years old, she said, a man tried to molest her in Collier County; after she told the police, they picked him up and dropped him off down the road at a supermarket.

“I feel that our system is very failed in that way,” she told the Sun Sentinel. “And him bringing it to the public for us civilians to be able to see it starts an uproar.”

To report a suspected child exploitation crime, contact the confidential tip line at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or use the online reporting form at https://southfloridaicac.org/report-a-tip/

Staff Writer Shira Moolten can be reached at smoolten@sunsentinel.com or 754-971-0636.

More than 20 elected officials and rabbis came together for the first Palm Beach County Jewish-Civic Leadership Roundtable at Boca Raton Synagogue on Feb. 12, with the goal of discussing the state of the Jewish community in the region. Rather than just exchanging concerns, however, the dialogue centered on a shared commitment to mutual support and strengths.

“It’s great to be surrounded by old faces, by new faces, and meeting so many new people,” Jonathan Rubin, the synagogue’s community organizer who put on the event, told the panel. “Despite the rapid growth of nearly 2 million people, due to the leadership of this room in many ways, the county still feels like a small town.”

There were two topics at the top of everyone’s list: antisemitism and expansion. Here’s what we learned during the roundtable.

Rising antisemitism

Despite boasting one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, Palm Beach County is not spared from the shadow of antisemitism.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told participants he has made changes to protect the Jewish community, including providing extra patrols for events and enhancing levels of visibility at its institutions following the Oct. 7, 2023, and 2025 Australia attacks.

“If you don’t take anything else away from this, we take your safety very seriously. We take antisemitism and hate crimes very seriously,” Bradshaw said. “We will make sure that you are protected and you do not have to change your way of life and we will be there when you need us.”

Matthew Lane, vice chair of the Palm Beach County School Board, spoke specifically about reducing violent incidents on campuses. District schools, he said, all have a single point of entry, uniformed officers, a behavioral health therapist trained to deal with crisis response, and officers with “the highest accreditation.”

“I can tell you the reason this is the best job I’ve ever had, because every day, I have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of 170,000 children,” Lane added.

Alexcia Cox, state attorney for Florida’s 15th Judicial Circuit, laid out a variety of measures she is helping to implement to increase community safety, including creation of a hate crimes unit, an awareness campaign and a hotline for people who want to report incidents anonymously.

“We want people to know if something is going on in the community, we are protecting you,” said Cox.

Development & expansion

Another big topic was growth. More and more people are making Palm Beach County home, and a large amount of these new residents are Jewish.

“We try to manage growth collectively,” said Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, who is running for U.S. Congress. “Charter schools and religious schools are growing in size, and that trend will continue. There are more people wanting to put their kids into private religious activities.”

The challenge, according to Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss, is “how to keep up with the growth and make sure infrastructure is working.” He pointed to technology as a solution, saying: “that includes modernizing government, looking at ways that we can improve traffic flows using technology, but also how we keep ourselves safe using technology.”

Meanwhile, many rabbis are hoping to expand their synagogues and create new opportunities for Jewish engagement. Among them are Rabbi Moishe Denburg of Chabad of Central Boca Raton, who mentioned the lack of space for their school; and Rabbi Yosef Raichik of Chabad of West Boynton Beach, who hopes to build a Jewish center in west Boynton Beach as part of the AG Reserve.

From farther north, Steven Kruh, a member of Palm Beach Synagogue and Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens, asked elected officials to “make north Palm Beach County a more welcoming environment for the continuing migration of Jews into [the area] in terms of building expansion and incentives to businesses that support the Jewish community.” Kruh said north Palm Beach County is a growing center for the Jewish community but lacks adequate Jewish education and access to kosher foods.

Closing statements

As the roundtable came to a close, community leaders reinforced the positives of Jewish life in Palm Beach County.

“It’s exciting to see the growth, the building, but the most important part is the children,” said County Commissioner Marci Woodward. “It speaks a lot to this area and this county. People won’t bring their children to a place they don’t feel safe. The more kids I see — the more laughter and happiness and freedom — it tells me we are on the right track.”

Added Denburg, of Chabad of Central Boca Raton: “As rabbis, we’ve always said there’s something in the air [here] that everyone gets along, which is unusual. We live in a special place.”

Of the two questions on the ballot, the first one pertains to whether the city should fund the construction of the police headquarters through $175 million in bond funds. The second asks residents whether the city should move forward with One Boca, a proposal to bring residences, a hotel, office and retail space to the land below the Brightline station and new government facilities.

At a recent public meeting, city officials explained to several residents how the proposal could affect them.

“We are not here to ask you to vote for it or to try to influence your vote. We’re really here to just provide you information so that you’re educated voters and you can make your own decision,” Jim Zervis, the city’s deputy city manager and chief financial officer, said at an information session Wednesday afternoon.

The finances

The general obligation bond the city is proposing to pay for the project is a government-financing option that property owners repay through property taxes.

The city estimates the average property tax impact from this bond would be about $123.74 a year, which is based on a home worth $475,000 in taxable value. This would be in addition to the city’s operating taxes.

These increases are not expected to last longer than 30 years.

“That’s the whole reason that (residents) get to vote is because they’re voting to tax themselves,” Zervis said.

The need

Issues with the current police headquarters at 100 NW Boca Raton Blvd., just south of the Brightline station, can be summed up simply as too old and too small.

That building was constructed in 1986, which was before Hurricane Andrew struck and subsequently spurred stricter building codes. So, if a bad storm is on track to hit Boca Raton, the building has to be evacuated, Police Chief Michele Miuccio said.

Since 1986, the city also has grown from nearly 59,000 people to more than 103,000 people, and police department employees have more than doubled from about 140 to more than 330 employees, Miuccio said. With the growth in employees, the department’s equipment has grown, too.

“We’re a full-service police department,” Miuccio said. “We have drones, we have SWAT, we have honor guard, we have a dive team.”

Of the need for space, Miuccio said, “We’re kind of busting at the seams.”

The new headquarters

The new police headquarters is proposed on land along Broken Sound Boulevard between Spanish River Library and the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, where part of IBM used to operate. Now, the site is overgrown vegetation.

So far, environmental specialists screened for animals such as gopher tortoises and all they found were raccoons. The city also will be conducting a tree survey.

The project will not affect the popular walking and biking trail behind the Spanish River Library and is instead intended to connect the library to the headquarters “to enhance connectivity and the public-facing elements of a police department,” said Lauren Burack, the city’s public works and engineering deputy director.

Police have said the new facility isn’t expected to affect response times. The department’s response time for emergencies is under five minutes. And it’s under 15 minutes for non-emergencies, police spokesperson Jessica Desir said in an email Friday.

In September, Muiccio said during a city meeting: ““What people have to understand is our patrol officers are strategically placed in zones throughout the entire city, and they also have staggered start and stop times. So we always have police officers out on the road at any given moment.”

The March 10 Ballot

The city’s general election ballot will have two referendum questions: The first pertains to the police headquarters and the second pertains to whether residents should approve One Boca.

These referendum questions are not inherently connected, which is a common misconception among residents, Zervis said. If the police headquarters plan is shot down, then the city will regroup to determine why; if the plan is approved, then it will move forward as planned, Burack said.

The price tag appears to be the biggest deterrent for critics of the new headquarters, with residents taking to social media to complain.

On a Facebook post where a user encourages people to vote against the police station, another user comments: “$175 Million….Are they insane?”

However, the One Boca project has drawn fiercer opposition over the past year. Lawn signs and T-shirts encouraging people to vote “no” on the One Boca project have multiplied in recent weeks as the election nears.

Regardless of the outcomes on March 10, this year’s general election is proving to be one of the city’s most pivotal in years.

On view until December 2027, the DKJA exhibition highlights the school’s visual arts program and showcases the use of different mediums to convey Jewish expression.

The exhibit is supported and hosted by the Boca Raton Innovation Campus as part of its program, Art on BRiC Walls, which turns the campus into a living art studio.

Visitors can view 80 pieces of student and alumni art at no cost from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays at BRiC, 5000 T-Rex Ave., Suite 160, Boca Raton.

For more information about Donna Klein Jewish Academy and its arts programming, visit dkja.net.

The deadline to request a mail ballot is Thursday, Feb. 26.

State law sets a strict deadline of 5 p.m. for vote-by-mail ballot requests to be at the county elections office. That includes online applications. Postmarks for mailed applications don’t count.

People can request mail ballots online.

Residents of two cities, towns and villages in Broward and 19 in Palm Beach County are electing local officials, deciding on referendums, or both. Some communities will pick successors to departing mayors who have been in office for years.

There are three key factors voters may not be aware of and need to know:

— People who want to vote by mail in the March municipal elections need to make new requests if they haven’t done so since the 2024 presidential election. Under state law, all requests for vote-by-mail ballots made prior to the 2024 presidential elections have been voided.

— There is no in-person early voting for the city, town and village elections.

— Voters who have renewed or replaced a Florida driver’s license or state ID may need to update their license or ID number with the county supervisor of elections office so the request for a mail ballot can be processed.

Who can vote

Most Broward communities have their local elections in November. Palm Beach County municipalities generally use the uniform March election day.

Broward voting: Lauderhill and Pembroke Pines. Candidates in four other places were unopposed, so elections won’t be held.

Palm Beach County voting: Boynton Beach, Belle Glade, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Greenacres, Gulf Stream, Hypoluxo, Juno Beach, Jupiter Inlet Colony, Lake Park, Lake Worth Beach, Loxahatchee Groves, Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Beach Shores, Royal Palm Beach, South Palm Beach, Wellington, and West Palm Beach.

Only people who are registered to vote in municipalities are eligible to participate. Voters whose address lists a city, yet reside in an unincorporated area, are not eligible to vote in the municipal election.

Returning mail ballots

People should return their mail ballots well before Election Day, March 10.

Florida law features a strict deadline for returning mail ballots. They must be back at the county elections office by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Postmarks don’t count.

Elections officials routinely warn against waiting too long to return ballots and risking a Postal Service delay. Every election there are ballots that arrive late and can’t be counted under Florida law. In close elections there often have been enough uncounted ballots to potentially change the results.

People can also return their mail ballots at drop boxes at supervisors of elections offices in their home counties. Details about the hours and locations are available at the county elections office websites.

State law no longer uses the term “drop boxes” for ballots. Florida changed the name to “secure ballot intake stations” after Republican activists claimed without evidence that they weren’t sufficiently secure and could lead to fraud.

Someone who requests and receives a mail ballot is not required to use it. Voters can still vote in their neighborhood polling stations on Election Day, March 10. Safeguards are in place to prevent someone from voting more than once.

Make it count

To make sure your vote counts, mark the ballot exactly the way the instructions specify. If you don’t, it might not scan correctly.

If someone votes for more than one candidate in a race (unless it’s a contest in which people are supposed to pick more than one candidate), the vote won’t count. People can skip a race and leave it blank.

Elections canvassing boards in each county end up reviewing unusual ballot markings and are left to decipher voter intent. If they’re unable to figure it out, the vote isn’t counted.

Election Day

Neighborhood polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, March 10.

Anyone who is in line at 7 p.m. is allowed to vote.

People must vote in their assigned polling place on Election Day.

Someone must have a current, valid photo ID with a signature. The most common are Florida driver’s licenses or state ID cards.

Many other forms of ID, including passports, are accepted. If the photo ID doesn’t have a voter’s signature, the person will have to show another ID with a signature.

Dates & deadlines

In-person early voting: Not available for March local elections.

Return mail ballots: 7 p.m. March 10. Postmarks don’t count.

Election Day: March 10. Neighborhood polling stations are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Information

People can check to see if they’re registered to vote, request mail ballots and check their status, and find locations of polling places online and by phone.

Broward County: www.browardvotes.gov, 954-357-8683.

Palm Beach County: www.votepalmbeach.gov, 561-656-6200.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against a private prison company facing a lawsuit alleging immigration detainees were forced to work and paid only $1 a day in Colorado.

The unanimous ruling is a procedural defeat for the GEO Group, but it’s not a final decision. The company is fighting a lawsuit from 2014 alleging detainees in Aurora had to perform unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.

GEO defended its practices and argued that the case should be tossed out because it’s immune from lawsuits as a government contractor.

After a judge disagreed, the company asked the Supreme Court to allow it to quickly appeal the ruling. But the justices refused.

The Boca Raton-based GEO Group is one of the top private detention providers in the country, with management or ownership of about 77,000 beds at 98 facilities. Its contracts include a new federal immigration detention center where Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at a protest in May 2025, before the case against the Democrat was dropped.

Similar lawsuits have been brought on behalf of immigration detainees elsewhere, including a case in Washington state, where the company was ordered to pay more than $23 million.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

WHAT: Guy Fieri is bringing his super-duper-celeb-chef heat to SoFlo, but the visit doesn’t have anything to do with cuisine or his star status on the Food Network. Fieri will be here promoting his new Santo Tequila at a meet-and-greet, bottle-signing appearance on Friday, Feb. 27, in Boca Raton.

Back in 2019, Fieri partnered with Sammy Hagar, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, for Santo Spirits. The dynamic duo have been best buds for decades.

The brand is made at the famed El Viejito Distillery in the Jaliscan Highlands of Mexico, which is headed by a third-generation distiller. Santo Spirits’ portfolio includes a Blanco, Reposado and Añejo, as well as a 110-proof Blanco Tequila and a Mezquila (tequila and mezcal blend), according to the company’s website.

The food icon recently grabbed headlines by putting his signature spiked bleached coiffure on the downlow for a Bosch appliances/power tools Super Bowl commercial.

On the Food Network, Fieri — who has a home on Singer Island in Palm Beach County — hosts “Guy’s Grocery Games,” “Tournament of Champions,” “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” and the upcoming “Flavortown Food Fight”

WHEN: 5-6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27

WHERE: Total Wine & More, 5050 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton

COST: Free

INFORMATION: totalwine.com and santospirits.com