LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — A man known as the "TikTok Trickster" has waived an extradition hearing after appearing in court Monday afternoon.
University of Kentucky police arrested 54-year-old Brenton Fillers at a hospital on outstanding warrants from several states. He is currently being held at the Fayette County Detention Center.
Fillers will appear back in court on May 5.
ORIGINAL STORY
Police in Kentucky cracked a case investigators across the South had been trying to solve, involving women who said a man had allegedly struck up a relationship with them on TikTok, taken money from them, and disappeared.
It began like a lot of other modern love stories — with a connection on social media.
"She said, 'I met a gentleman on TikTok. We've been talking for a few months and he came out here to visit and we had a great time. Everything was fine,'" said Officer Danielle Strickland of the Somerset Police Department.
But Strickland said everything changed on the day the woman was supposed to go on vacation with the man she knew as Jason Mitchell.
"They went to the Lexington airport to go on their vacation and while they were at the airport, she handed him a sum of money to go valet her car and he disappeared. Gone. Nowhere to be found," Strickland said. "The security was able to locate him on camera getting into a black SUV and leaving Lexington airport."
Strickland said the man finally reached out about three hours later, saying he was in the hospital, but wouldn't tell her where. Finally, the woman decided to go to police and she had one piece of crucial information.
"She came in here and reported it and I said, 'Ask him who the doctor is who's treating him? What's going on?' She gave me the name. Her and I both kind of googled it together, searched it together, and we came up with that he, the doctor, worked at UK," Strickland said.
The other piece of the puzzle was a news story from NBC 15 News in Mobile, Alabama. They talked to several women who had the same story — they met a man on TikTok and developed a relationship with him, then had given him money. One woman said he had taken her car. An investigator in Alabama used facial recognition technology to match the face the women knew with a name they could trace.
"It was his vanity that got him. He's a golfer. His vanity was showing trophies of him winning golf tournaments in Texas that were online, in newspapers, what have you, and that's how we were able to get the initial hit," said Chief John Barber of the Spanish Fort Police Department in Alabama.
NBC 15 reported his name was Brenton Fillers. From there, Officer Strickland kept digging, discovering he had warrants out in several states for theft, credit card fraud, and even sexual assault of a child. Now, with a full name and that UK Hospital lead, everything came together.
"We contacted UK Police. UK Police got the NCIC photo, got the driver's license picture of him, went to his room and confirmed it was, indeed, him," Strickland said.
UK Police arrested Fillers today. It's unclear how long he'll be in the hospital, but UK Police Chief Joe Monroe said he would ultimately go to the Fayette County Detention Center before an extradition hearing. It's a crazy story — one that Officer Strickland says really shows how careful people need to be.
"Don't trust anyone. Don't trust anyone when it comes to social media," Strickland said. "Just follow your intuition. if you think something is wrong, act on it, don't let it go,"
Strickland and Monroe said collaboration between all those agencies was the key to piecing the case together. Monroe said in all, Fillers had warrants out for motor vehicle theft in Tennessee, fraudulent use of a credit card in Arkansas, theft of property in Alabama, and aggravated sexual assault of a child in Texas. He said Fillers may face charges here in Kentucky as well.
