“Vitaly Ruined My Life!” Akash Breaks Silence On Being Falsely Accused & Doxxed On Livestream

I want to apologize for a mistake we made in one of our last streams. I was falsely accused by Vitaly Live in front of millions of people. I swear to God, she never told me she was missing. I swear, I... Oh, my bad, bro. The racism, the bullying, the threatening of physical harm, all the time while I'm completely and fully innocent. Don't look at me, man, bitch. I'll f*** you up, bro. They didn't care about the truth. I'm the one who called the cops. I'm the one who gave them my phone. And within a few hours, the police proved that I was completely innocent. We were completely, completely wrong, and we made a terrible mistake. By then, it was too late. How did that ruin your life? One of the reasons why I wasn't leaving the house was because... Sorry to your family, friends, your co-workers, and I feel really terrible. Are you suing Vitaly? Akash, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, guys. It's such an honor to be here. I'm filled with so much gratitude that we were able to have this conversation. A lot of people have reached out to me and podcasts, reporters, mainstream media, institutional media. and I specifically chose to talk to you guys because I've been fans for over six plus years now. I love your content. I really relate to it. And through watching you guys for so long, you've earned my intellectual and ethical trust and I feel very comfortable sharing my story with you. Wow. Well, thank you so much for coming to the podcast. Honestly, it's such an honor because I imagine how crazy your life has been over the past 72 hours, over the past week. like I imagine everything's moving a mile a minute, but for you to take the time to come on the show, that means a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Life has been, um, a nightmare. Um, recently, uh, things have been so crazy and so hectic and the support has been amazing from the online community and support from my family and friends. And how do you even, how do you even explain this guys? You know, I mean, we'll start with the beginning. Vitaly accused you of being a predator in front of millions of people how did that live as well right how did that ruin your life it's like you can't even pick one thing to focus on because like not only was there the false accusation not only was there the harassment the bullying um calling out my business before during and after meeting me um the fans reaching out to my family during the live stream um calling them saying, your son is in trouble. He's going to go to jail, going to go to prison. And this was all during the live stream when my family couldn't contact me at all. How many people were watching the live stream? Do you know? To my knowledge, it was around 35,000 people live. Holy. Yeah. Yeah. And then immediately it was getting clipped by everyone, getting clipped by people in India, spread across India within the same night. So this was instantaneous. Like as soon as you're on camera, people are already like clipping and sharing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like all like my friends found out, my family found out, cousins in India found out, business partners were being reached out to immediately and underneath their like social media pages, there were comments saying um like falsely accusing me and people repeating the same messaging that vitaly was um like falsely promoting online and just harassing me like dms um all within the same night did you know who vitaly was at any kid who grew up my age um vitaly was one of the most popular youtubers um at that time so like of course i knew him and i've watched his content um and i knew who he was and in the beginning obviously like the first 30 seconds I was just really confused and I was like looking like this um pointing because I was just what is going on I was like shocked confused curious um and there were so many things happening at the same time not only were they like being really racist Not only were they like falsely accusing me of some of the most horrible things you could ever like accuse someone of, they were also like threatening me with physical violence. Don't look at me in my mind, bitch. I'll fucking fuck you up, bro. Harassing me completely. And then right after that, I was like, okay, I need to call the cops. how did all of this start like how did you even come in contact with this person to begin with yeah great great question so like millions of people every single day i was talking to a woman online on a dating app um legally and consensually of course and we talked for a couple of hours and we made plans to meet and i had no reason whatsoever to assume anything was um like wrong. So nothing stood out. There were no red flags. Absolutely not yet. It just seemed like a normal conversation. And this happened in a few hours. So like you woke up that morning, started talking to someone, met up and like this, it was like pretty quick. Yes. Yes. So it was the same day. Wow. Yes. Yes. And after I agreed to meet up with her, within 30 seconds of me exiting my car there's just like nine people with like five cameras shoved in my face saying the craziest stuff I had no idea what was going on I mean in my head I was just like is this a fucking prank like what is going on in my head um and I think I even said this in the video like is this a prank because I knew I was completely innocent and I knew that like I had done nothing wrong and so in my head I was like maybe they're just doing this like for views or whatever um because I knew I did nothing wrong and then I tried to talk to them I tried to tell them look like this wasn't me I didn't do anything wrong I wanted to show them all the text and everything I wanted to get to the bottom of this and the woman started talking about a second Snapchat. And I was like, I only have one Snapchat. I don't have two Snapchats. And that's not me. You're talking to someone else. That's a completely different person. I didn't know if it was a completely different person. I don't know if she made up the Snapchat, if like this was something done by them on purpose. I had no idea. And I asked to look at the Snapchat and like, this is all on the video that's released online. Even the six minute video, I asked to look at the snapchat and they they wouldn't show me and then right after that i'm pretty sure Um is when I was like, okay, I need to call the cops immediately because I want all the evidence to be documented Um, like I I don't feel safe right now and most importantly All the evidence to exonerate me and clear my name Fully because i'm fully innocent needs to be documented immediately immediately and the only solution towards documenting that evidence properly in my opinion was the cops and so i was like okay i'm gonna call the cops immediately then they came and i was like take my phone look through everything go through everything i waved my like any normal person um if you've watched any type of lawyer tv show or anything they all say don't say anything exactly don't say anything without the presence of counsel um like you should know your rights protect your rights um anything you can say canon will be used against you like so they read you the Miranda rights was like hey man anything you say canon will be used against you it's like you want to speak they went through that entire thing with you yeah so um in the beginning I was I was trying to get them to go through all the evidence in the very beginning um the moment that I met up with them but they said you need to wait until we read you your Miranda rights and so I had to wait before you know, I could talk to them about anything. And then I like waved my rights and I told them, look through my phone, look through everything. I have nothing to hide. I will like, I want to figure this out with you at this point in time. Everything was like a puzzle in my head where the pieces didn't fit. I like, it was like a mystery that needed to be solved. Um, and so it was like, I was actually like, um, me and four of the officers worked together, primarily three different officers. We worked together in conjunction to comb through all the evidence from both sides. And I wasn't able to comb through some of the evidence from the other side, but they did it. And they found me fully innocent and completely clear of doing all wrongdoing to the point where these officers inside the interrogation room were profusely apologizing. So they checked Vitaly's phone and all of their stuff, right? Because what's to prevent Vitaly from saying, no, I'm not giving anything. You got to get a lawyer. Yeah. So it was the woman who gave all the evidence to the cops from her side. And after combing through all of her evidence, on call, the female cop, who you can see in the video, she called the woman and she told her, this guy's innocent. You have the wrong guy. We're letting him go. he's completely innocent. You need to take down the videos. Otherwise, wow. So she complied, but she must've genuinely thought she was like, correct by complying. Or do you think that she was confused too? Well, so in the video itself, you'll hear a girl saying, maybe we made a mistake. She was saying that I blocked her. When I was on video, what like I was showing my phone to everyone. When did I have time to do something like that? Why would I want to get rid of any evidence to support my name? I have nothing to hide. Basically what happened was inside the interrogation room, after I'd given all my evidence of the cops, I told the cops, please ask her for her evidence if you don't have it yet. And then they called her and they were on call with her for an hour. And she gave them all the evidence and they were like this guy's completely innocent to the point where like they were like they were telling her he's completely innocent he did nothing wrong you guys got the wrong guy you guys got the wrong guy we're letting him go yeah they were all just profusely apologizing um saying we've never seen anything like this um like we're so sorry that this happened to you this is like a one in a million chance for this to happen um if there were any other cops who were there, who knows if they would have taken the time to properly go through your case and listen to you and that I'm very filled with gratitude to all the cops that worked with me and took their time to fully investigate what happened and clear me within the same night. So how much time passed between you stepping out of the car, immediately getting bombarded with Vitaly and his entire crew, and then being exonerated by the cops. Our guest on this episode was probably seen hundreds of millions of times this week, which is just absolutely insane because his story broke on X and within hours, clips were everywhere. And that's just the world that we're in now. The right clip at the right moment spreads faster than anything. Clipping is without a doubt the most popular way that information is being received right now. It's really how stories spread, how people get discovered and how businesses get exposure they could have never gotten otherwise. And that's why we've partnered with Opus Clip. Opus Clip finds the best moments from your video and generates multiple clips that are instantly ready for social media. Really, guys, it's never been this easy to consistently post short form videos. Opus Clip can write captions to save you even more time, and it automatically reframes and optimizes your videos, making them ready for any platform. And now with a mobile app, you can clip anywhere at any time Seriously guys Opus Clip has just been a huge help clipping up literally all of our content for the iced coffee hour So if you ready to streamline your business Opus Clip is absolutely perfect for you Check out Opus Clip at opus slash ICH That is opus slash ICH Thanks again so much to Opus Clip for supporting the show and back to the episode. So how much time passed between you stepping out of the car, immediately getting bombarded with Vitaly and his entire crew and then being exonerated by the cops? To my memory around three and a half hours. So walk me through those three and a half, four hours then. I'm curious, like, where was your mind going? Was your family calling you? What did you experience in those four hours? So the moment I first met the cops, they had my phone. They took my phone and in the car, I was just, I'd never felt less control over anything in my life. Up until this point, I just felt the least in control. And I ended up turning to spirituality and my faith. And I was just like, God, please help me. I did nothing wrong. Please make sure all the evidence stays. And please help me. Please help me. I did nothing wrong. and I was just, I was like the whole world is gonna, you know, think something about me that's completely false and like a lie and just my like intimate life. No one would want their intimate conversations that they have in the bedroom with their partner to be put out to the entire world. It was like, this is something, I'm a very private person, you know, And now all of a sudden the whole world has their eyes on me, like tens of thousands of DMs, even though like I haven't even shown my face in any of my posts or anything purposely. I was I was really scared. I was scared for. Whether or not like in the moment, right after it happened, I was like, what could have happened if I wasn't found fully innocent and cleared within the same night? like if it was any other different cops or anything yeah in the beginning i didn't know if you know the cops are going to fully investigate everything or if they were going to look through all the evidence i had no this was my first time ever like you know stepping foot inside of a police station you know much less in the back of a police car the most that i've ever gotten um i'm a very risk averse person in everything in my life i'm just very risk averse like i would never like go skydiving um for example uh i don't speed on when i'm driving because like i don't want to use up my luck on the road um and so the max i've ever gotten was like a a speeding ticket like five years ago and now you know i'm fighting for my life in the moment like even though there was so much like racism like crazy racism like it was like yeah what was what was that like like have Have you had comments ever directed at you like that before? Oh, my God. There's always some experiences. Like as a minority, you'll have some type of experience. It might not be really big or anything like that. But nothing at all compared to what was going on then. I mean, the moment he pulls up, he's just being so, so, so racist. which was like astonishing and absurd to me. I was like, like, what are you doing? You know? And in the moment, honestly, even though all of these injustices were happening, like crazy things were happening, my main thought was like my main like priority and my main focus in my mind was like, what is going on? What is going on? I was so confused. I was just trying to understand the situation and then get all the evidence and then prove that I just didn't do anything wrong at all. I was like, okay, the first thing that I need to do is just focus on proving my innocence. So when they proved you innocent, did anybody in your life still believe that, hey, maybe he's not innocent? Or did everyone come around? When I first released the statement before I released the audio, everyone was still in doubt. Even though Vitaly had a video and written statement saying that, you know, I didn't do anything wrong. And even though I put out a statement saying that, you know, like even the cops fully cleared me and proved me innocent. people were still thinking that maybe we paid them off or like there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute me or whatever but in reality the truth is they found evidence that it was a full 100 mistake on vitaly's team guys like this was a complete blunder and mistake by his team i did nothing wrong um like there's evidence that this was a mistake on vitaly's team and vitaly's side what was the mistake great question from your perspective so yeah so I mean like this is the clear cut mistake that they made the decoy who her job is to talk to as many guys as possible on dating apps and then move them over to snapchat tell them her fake age and like get them to meet up that never happened she never told me anything like um if you check the video i added her on snapchat and i sent um three messages and never got a response back and so then we kept texting on the dating app and she was texting a bunch of guys at the same time because like that's what she was being incentivized to do and she mixed up apparently she like thought that she was talking to me when she was talking to like one of the other who knows how many guys she was currently talking to at the same time. And then like apparently she thought it was me. And it wasn't. She was talking to someone completely different, a real guy. She was talking to them. And that's who she had the conversation with on Snapchat. And it was never me. Her and I never ever talked off the dating app because she never responded. And the police saw that. What was the hardest part for you mentally? Was it like fear, anger? How do you keep your composure? I keep my circle close and very tight. The biggest emotion that I had was just my family. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know if they were going to, like, I didn't know what they were going to think. I didn't know whether they would believe me. Like, in the beginning, I was just really, they're my strength. They're my rock, my foundation. I didn't know what they were going to think, and that was probably the most scariest thing of all. and like surprisingly enough like the second biggest feeling that I had was like gratitude for my parents the first time that I called them and got to talk to them because I wasn't allowed to you know talk to anyone because I didn't have my phone until after I got fully proven innocent because they were using my phone as a source of like evidence to look at and comb through my entire phone. Right after the cop talked to on the audio, you can see I'm going to give the the cop says I'm going to give the phone to your son so you can speak to him now. And so I was called like I was talking to my parents and they were just like, we love you. We support you. We know you didn't do anything wrong. Like we're here for you. And like that, like the first time I cried was when I heard the cop say I was innocent for the first time. We determined that he was not the right suspect we were looking for. So your son was perfectly compliant. He was cool with us. And he just happened to be wrong place, wrong time. And then the second time I choked up and started crying was when I heard that from my parents. And I was just choking up saying, thank you guys so much. I don't know how many parents would really stick up for their kids in a situation like that when private details are getting exposed. Like they just, all they cared about was supporting me. They said like, we just, we love you. We're here for you no matter what. Like you're our son. Like we're so proud of you. Good job for calling the cops. We're really, really, really proud of you for calling the cops. That could have gone so differently had you just said nothing. Yeah, or just left. Or left, or I'm going to retain an attorney because I'm going to tell you, man, had you done that it would have taken months yeah and if you left like they could have just said you deleted evidence yeah yeah and i mean i i knew that i didn't do anything wrong and so in the beginning i tried to explain that to them like i was i was trying to explain it to them and i was i was trying to like work out what happened like where was like was this a prank is this uh like miscommunication what's going on and they didn't care about that in any way shape or form we had no choice like I had no choice but I had no choice like at first I tried to you know talk to them sort of calmly um and explain what's going on and then like when they started physically threatening me at least I'd already called the cops at this point I'm curious the viewers of this live stream how do they find out like your name and like try to find your family like how do they do that yeah so um even in the beginning before I had met her in person they were calling out my business and then during the live stream when i was calling the cops uh and i was giving them my information uh they didn't mute it mute the mic oh so they were filming you basically saying here's like my info yes yes and then they muted it with the cross streets yeah like the the moment when they muted it was when i was giving out the address but um before that they were like filming the whole thing yeah yeah they never stopped recording yeah i mean they knew i was gonna give my information because they heard the cop asking me what's all my information they didn't mute the mic or anything like that and then even then like i i said i was saying my name and they said oh like you made a mistake now everyone's gonna know who you are um or whatever and then i mean but even then after that um they called out my linkedin my business they they told people to go cancel me and my business. And so before, during, and after this entire thing, they told people to go after my business. And what about your family during that four hour window before the public statement was made that you were not guilty of what they were accusing you of and your own phone? I imagine like what were the messages, the outreach, what did all of that look like during those four hours? I was getting a lot of phone calls and like my father was like calling my phone, but I didn't know because I didn't have access to my phone. And then they were like, my parents believed that I did nothing wrong because I called the cops immediately. And like, they were very proud of that. They were like, okay, like when you call the cops, that's when we knew for sure, without a doubt in our mind, he didn't do anything. Like you didn't do anything in the class. What about friends, acquaintances, people you used to know your parents phones were other people calling your parents Like I don know childhood friends parents or something like that Yeah so like after like even up until today everyone is, like, talking to my business partners and family friends and, like, my close friends and extended friends and just people who know me through other people, et cetera. Like, people who know, oh, like, this guy's a cautious friend. reaching out to all of us saying, oh, like what happened? Everyone wants to know more details. Like the video and me being innocent, it's not enough. Everyone's reaching out and saying, oh, like we want to know more. What happened? What do you think they want to know? I don't know. I mean, I guess they just want to know like more, like how I guess how I felt. I don't even know. And like a lot of them are offering their condolences, et cetera. um like the support has been really amazing in terms of like the outreach from family and friends and everything after i was proven completely fully innocent how are you doing taking it day by day step by step um like trying to focus on um gratitude for the cops my family the support of the online community being able to come up like on a podcast like this where I've been watching your content for years and been a fan of you guys, an honest, true fan, where I've learned so much as well. And everything, it's still happening, right? It's not like this whole ordeal isn't over yet, clearly. People are still finding out. Do you think it went more viral when Vitaly apologized? Because what's funny is that's how I found out about it was when he said, delete the video. And then me being the idiot that I am, I'm like, what's the video? And then I look it up. But just him saying delete the video is enough for a lot of people to be like, let me find the video. And then everyone's reposting the video when he wants it taken down. It's like the Streisand effect. It makes it worse. I mean, I haven't really taken a look at the numbers, but I mean, what I like, I do think that like the apology um did uh like have an effect on the virality of it um but i also think that no matter what he would have had like whether it's now or later he would have had to apologize but yeah it's just like it's everywhere i think like like 200 250 million different people have seen this entire thing have you got recognized in public yet no but i haven't gone out in public really um like yeah i remember even saying like you're worried about going to the airport yeah yeah um just because we don't know what people are thinking and we don't know what's going on um who knows right and so this is like we're all very private this is you know my first time in the spotlight and it's something that i did not ask for um and nor did I ever want um you and I were talking like offline and um I told you that like um like I always wanted to be like um a wealthy man but be able to walk anywhere in the world and have nobody know like mine and my family's name like I thought that was like peace like that that's what I wanted that's what I envisioned um I never had any desire for fame um at all I know how that really takes away your right to a private life to some extent because everyone's always looking at you. I never wanted any of that, but here we are. Has Vitaly reached out to you privately? Aside from right after the apology, asking what we were going to do legally, no, he has not reached out. Even after having your innocence proven, have you received a lot of hate i have um what do they say that they don't believe me even though all parties involved have fully cleared me and said this is a mistake i'm to tally side um that um like i'm a messed up person that uh this is all staged can you believe that can you can you believe that that's crazy people would think that what that would be one of the worst things ever to stage what nonsense And like in my head, like, honestly, like all I could think of is what nonsense. Yeah, it was just, it was crazy. Like the hate, the racism, like there was a lot of racism after the fact too. There was a lot of, there's some physical violence. People were threatening, like they're going to like, you know, come to my house or, you know, yada, yada, yada. that's gotta be terrifying. Yeah, yeah. Do you take any security precautions on that? Like if they say they're gonna, okay. We hired security, even though it's super expensive. We were just scared, really scared. Like what's gonna happen? Is anyone gonna, you know, they have my name, they have everything, my business. Are they gonna find out where I live? Are they gonna come? Like one of the reasons why I wasn't leaving the house was because what if someone's waiting for me outside? I've never been in this position, you know? I've never had the whole world spotlight on me. And like, who knows what people are going to, you know, think and do, right? People could be crazy. And all it takes is like out of millions, there's one. One person. Just one bad actor. Just one, there's a little cuckoo. But everyone else, you know, one. Yeah. It's not worth taking the risk on the one. Exactly, exactly. And so we did have to take precaution in the aspect of be really safe, maybe consider getting an Airbnb or something like that for the time being. Luckily, there's been no incidents, physical incidents or anything like that. But there has been a lot of threats made and just hate and racism and the DMs, comments, whatever you name it. Are you suing Vitaly? I'm keeping all my options open. Right now, my number one concern is the mental health of myself, my family, and the people around me. He has to be held accountable. Dejustice on so many levels. When a false accusation like this is made live in front of millions of people, especially when you add everything else on top of it proper verification and like proper procedure to make sure that you have the right person is so so incredibly important this can ruin lives imagine if it was someone else that like i don't know like if this happened almost any other person who knows what could have happened like if my father didn't record the phone call audio call with the police then even like until now like we're about to get um like the police report etc but it takes it it takes a week to get the police report we wouldn't be able to prove my innocence until now yeah but because we got the audio recording because all these things happened And I really believed that, you know, like God had my back where not only was I able to be proved completely innocent of any wrong doing the same night, but the whole world was able to find out. and after the audio call, that's when everyone was like, oh shit. How often, guys, how often do you see a cop apologizing like that for a mistake? Especially for how quick. Yes, yeah. You got very lucky. I mean, considering the circumstance, you got insane. Yeah, you're like the luckiest guy ever, man. When you think of how bad it could have been, and what the outcome was. In the beginning, I felt like, in the beginning, listen, it felt like a cosmic fucking joke, right? In the beginning, I felt like the most unlucky person in the entire world. I felt like this was like, I felt like the devil was trying to ruin my life through the most insane way possible because you can't even make this up, man. If you're writing a story, you can't even make this up. And then towards the end of all this, like a couple hours later, I felt like the, like luckiest, unluckiest man and then the luckiest man within the same night. Like I was feeling both ways at once, if that can make sense, because the cops look past like everything in terms of like, they look past all their assumptions about me or whatever to properly comb through all the evidence, investigate everything really thoroughly and prove my innocence. and then like my parents, the support of the online community and then everyone like believing I'm innocent after like the audio call for the most part, that being released and that being recorded, being born into like such a supportive family that I was born into, like all of these factors all played like a huge pivotal role towards my innocence being proven within the same night. If Vitaly was here right now, what would you tell him? You tried to ruin my life and there was no care for due process or verification, proper verification. Not only did you try to ruin my life, you were extremely racist. Called out my business before, during and after. Threatened physical harm. Like, why? like I get I wholeheartedly support you know protecting the innocent and vulnerable from any type of wrongdoers whatsoever but like shouldn't you know how important this is you've been in the like in this you know industry or business or whatever for so long like who knows how many other people this happened to if like if it did i don't know but if it happened to other people like who knows um well why didn't you care about that well why didn't you check yourself why didn't you check all the evidence yourself before falsely accusing me and harassing me and bullying me um why do you think that this is a cause that vitaly actually does care about after looking through all his videos not really um the day right after the day right after all this happened um and he had already found out that i was innocent he went on live stream and there was this other person who was rightfully accused they they caught the right guy and he was telling the world uh let's run a poll in the chat um should we release him or should we turn him into the cops um and he was making that one guy go with them throughout the entire stream to catch other predators and turning it into content and then at the end um like the chat and everything had voted to release him. This was when he knew I was innocent the very next day. Then he was planning on letting this guy go. And he said this multiple times on stream the very next day that, okay, I'm gonna let him go. We becoming friends with him He a chill guy whatever And this guy ended up running away or something Who knows what happened Even though they were planning on letting him go this guy ended up running away But if they really cared about this if at all he really cared about this, and this is all my opinion, but if at all he really cared about this, then he would probably call the cops on this guy immediately. What's interesting is that we, Jack and I were doing some research on this, and we came across someone who was doing something similar. And they said in the way that people go about catching these people, there's so many errors that actually prosecuting is next to impossible with the way that they do it. And that out of like a hundred cases where the cops have been called, I think they said only like two or three. Yeah, out of like a hundred cases, there have been two or three arrests. So it's like the people are getting publicly shamed, but it's not actually doing justice. it's well not only that but it's it's not stopping it because if they're still out free to roam yeah then they're still free to do whatever yeah and i don't know if like if the public humiliation is as good as just keeping them away from public where they could continue to do harm like if you humiliate someone who commits a violent crime will that just like stop them from doing it again or is it a person that has you know a compulsive nature where they can get angry really quickly or or someone who has a compulsive nature in a different way where they can feel a different way very quickly. So there are other people on YouTube that have done this effectively. I used to watch this guy, Anxiety War, all the time. Anxiety War made, Zach Sweers. Yeah, 2012 to 2014 YouTube. He made phenomenal content. And he would have these conversations and he would document every video was like a full documentary on the entire encounter, every exchange that was had, and he would even meet these people. There was one where he like shaved his beard and like tried to look like a little boy. And he like met this person. Like it was the amount of research that he would do into this. And every single time he would draft a perfect case and hand it off to the local authorities. Didn't he blur their faces too? It would result in actual arrests and he would do updates on the arrests. Someone like Vitaly, if you, in this isolated incident, and this is just my opinion, it's not a statement of fact. if you look at this as an isolated incident, you may be able to say, you know, maybe he does care about it. He does seem passionate. But if you map this out across the timeline of his career, he is clearly not shown any form of like moral, you know, standard with what he's done. Like he's just chased whatever most outrageous thing that he can do for views. And another thing that I actually think is very twisted is a lot of the people that try to catch these predators, what they end up doing is basically like a form of like mini T-O-R-T-O-R-E where they basically get this person in a vulnerable state of like, hey, your life is screwed unless if you do this and they just make content out of it. It's not actually about getting this person arrested and solving the problem. It's just about whatever outrageous content. How else can you get someone where you can get them to do whatever you want? Yeah. Aside from holding this over their head saying, hey if you don't follow our rules then we're gonna you know and then yeah now that i think about it isn't that like extortion and blackmail yes which i think is probably what leads to well let's say my opinion on the matter is yes what leads to a lot of these people getting let off really they could maybe also call it a honeypot where they were lured in oh so they wouldn't in this way yeah but there's also proper documentation there's proper documentation that needs to be had like with like there's probably a way that you need to have the conversations instead of just like having some random person with no credibility or credentials. So like all the proof that you need to have, honestly, is if you have like, you know, like text messages, um, showing proof that, um, the person was informed of the fake age, that's pretty actionable. Um, at least from my understanding and like, because there was, there was no evidence that I did anything wrong in terms of nothing was ever deleted or anything. And they checked to see whether anything was deleted, by the way. This is a very serious deal. And so the investigation was very, very thorough. And... per month or Shopify.eu. Yeah, I mean. Well, I recommend that justice is found one way or another, whether that's through the courts or some other way. I hope that you're made whole because you're just living a normal life. Yeah. And of course, this meteor comes and completely throws you off of whatever course that you were on. Yeah. One thing that I was curious about is, I try to think about this from my perspective. Let's say that I have a date planned out with a girl and I've never met this girl before. Let's say like I meet her online and then I just Google her name because I know a lot of girls Google whatever guy's name when you should do this. If you're going on a date with someone, Google their name. And I Googled your name and the first five pages of Google all have to do with this case. and even if it says that you were wrongfully accused of it, I don't think that matters, unfortunately. Like I'm not saying this, like I'm just trying to be honest with you. If I were to Google a girl's name and it said wrongfully accused of, you know, like her ex-boyfriend, I'm like, I'm not getting anywhere near this girl. Like just in case. Even though it's like, I'm 99% sure, but that 1%. if she's really attractive. No, I'm kidding. I'm not getting anywhere near this girl. There's just no reason. There are so many fish in the sea. Why would I take a chance? Even if there are five pages of wrongfully accused, I don't care. I'm not going to look into it. And so I'm curious to see kind of how this plays out in the long run. Fortunately, a lot of people have rushed your defense, which is good. Is that a concern of yours? Or I'm also curious, this is kind of twisted, but have you had people reaching out to girls specifically because of your composure in the video? You seemed very like cool and collected. Did anything like that happen? Yeah. I mean, I've had a lot of support from everyone, um, male, female, uh, like, uh, even like, uh, parents, a lot of parents are reaching out saying, uh, if this was my son or like daughter, I couldn't imagine. Um, like I have kids that are your age. We have your back. Um, thank your parents, thank your family. Um, we're like very proud of you for the way you handled, handled yourself. And, um, it has like, uh, I am a concern that it will affect my life in other areas in terms of professional personal relationships. Um, even if 99.99% of people will forget about this in two or days, maybe after even 10 minutes. For any type of, you know, personal, professional relationship, if they look me up and this is what they see, who knows what they might think in five, 10 years, who knows? And it's just something that we are forced to deal with now. What have you learned from this experience? My friend reached out to me right after all this happened and told me, God gives the most difficult battles to his strongest warriors. I pray that I am a vessel to do something good. I really hope that. And if this is a test or something like that, then I really hope that I have good faith and goodwill. because it would be, it would make a lot more sense if maybe all of this happened for a reason for, you know, maybe some good to come out of it. That would really help a lot. I have like, I have reached out already to everyone and I told them that I'm not accepting any money or donations. Please everyone, if you see any type of GoFundMe or cryptocurrency or anything in my name, please do not donate to it. And so if you want to help in any type of way possible, the falsely accused, please consider donating to the Innocence Project. I know this has been a nightmare, a complete and total nightmare. But I used to always tell this to all my friends before any of this ever happened. There's two types of people in life. The first person something really bad happens to them and they want the whole world to feel the way they did the second person something bad really bad happens to them and they never want anyone to go through what they did ever again and i'm the second guy i want to be the second guy i'd like to be the second guy and that's why after like a lot of thinking um if the most like if the most horrible thing that happened to me in my life, the most difficult adversity I've ever gone through in my life, which I don't think I deserve to have happened to me. If that can help someone in any type of way, if we can use it to affect some type of good, if even one person donates to the Innocence Project because of this, at least something good will have happened. What's the Innocence Project? So the Innocence Project is the topmost charity that supports any falsely accused innocent person that doesn't have the means to support themselves. The Innocence Project takes up their case and helps them. And they're doing a phenomenal job. Obviously, you guys can see why this matters to me very deeply. We'll link to the Innocence Project down below. really appreciate you coming on and i'm curious what's something that you want everyone to know thank you so much for having me everyone got to know a side of me that is completely private and what i would want everyone to know is that i'm a normal guy uh i'm a businessman with a passion for vending machines i the reason why i started it is i think it's the most resilient business against AI. And that's what I want to be known for. A businessman, someone who loves what he does and cares for all the people around him. I'm a very private person. I never wanted to be in the spotlight. And now it seems like the whole world has their eyes on me. And if everyone wants to know me as like, if they want to get to know me, I would just say, look at my passions, look at what I love to do business, family faith these are the core tenants that I live by and that's what I would like to be known for I realize I think we need a vending machine in here that would not be a bad idea we could split the profit high ticket sales sell a bunch I got you guys we completely forgot to film an outro thank you so much for watching if you made it to the end we appreciate it so, so much. We would not be here without you. As always, so grateful for you. Thank you to Akash, our guest. Thank you to Graham for being such a great guy. Thanks for watching. Till next time.