Ethan Schmidt on Grindr? Threats, Predator Claim, and Charges

The claim that Ethan Schmidt-Crockett was on Grindr circulated widely online during the same stretch in 2022 and 2023 when the Phoenix provocateur was publicly calling for LGBTQ+ people to be “hunted” and placed in “isolation camps.” Asked about his apparent presence on the gay dating app, Schmidt-Crockett did not deny using it. He said he was there only for “predator catches,” a reference to the amateur sting-video genre popular in some right-wing circles.¹ He offered no further public explanation, and the reporting on the allegation does not go beyond that response.

Who Ethan Schmidt-Crockett Is

Schmidt-Crockett, born around 1998, is a Phoenix-based right-wing agitator who first drew attention in 2021 by filming himself berating retail employees over COVID-19 safety measures. He typically walked into private businesses with a bullhorn or a cell phone camera, harassed staff and customers, then posted the footage. He has compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and said his goal is to “create leftist outrage.”²³

After his accounts on Twitter and Instagram were suspended, he built a following on Telegram, livestreams, Truth Social, and X. By 2023 he was described as unemployed and banned from major payment processors, funding himself through direct donation requests and livestream income.³¹

The Threats That Made the Grindr Claim Newsworthy

The Grindr allegation drew attention because of what Schmidt-Crockett was saying about gay people at the same time. In a video circulated by the watchdog account Patriot Takes around May 2022, he warned that Target managers, employees, and supporters of Pride merchandise “were not going to be safe” and vowed to “hunt” them down.⁴

By August 2022 the rhetoric was more explicit. “We need to quarantine and isolate all the folks of the LGBT community,” he said. “We need to find all of them. We need to hunt them down and put them into isolation camps for their own protection.”⁵¹⁶

Against that backdrop, screenshots and claims putting him on Grindr moved quickly across social media. The apparent contradiction, someone calling for gay people to be rounded up while using a gay dating app, was the entire point of the story.

His “Predator Catches” Explanation

Schmidt-Crockett’s public response did not deny the app use. He said he was on such apps only to run “predator catches,” a nod to videos in which self-styled vigilantes pose online, arrange meetings with people they accuse of being predators, and film the confrontation.¹ Reporting in the file does not identify any specific “catch” video he produced from Grindr, any target named, any law enforcement referral, or independent confirmation of the underlying app use one way or the other. The public record on the Grindr question consists of the allegation and his response to it.

What He Has Actually Been Charged With

The Grindr claim itself has produced no charges. Schmidt-Crockett’s criminal record comes from his in-person confrontations, and it is substantial.

In August 2021 he was charged after storming into FnB, a Scottsdale restaurant that required proof of vaccination, and calling diners “a bunch of morons” through a bullhorn. He pleaded guilty to criminal trespass that December, drawing 11 months of unsupervised probation and 15 hours of community service; a disorderly conduct charge was dismissed.⁴

His repeated harassment of Sunny’s Hair and Wigs, a Mesa shop that required masks to protect immunocompromised clients, produced a restraining order in January 2022. He violated it by calling the business and was charged with interfering with judicial proceedings. In March 2023 he pleaded guilty and received three years of unsupervised probation and a suspended 60-day jail term, with conditions barring him from contacting employees or posting about the business online.⁴

In May 2023 he barged into Congregation Beth Tefillah, a Scottsdale synagogue, shouting “Jesus Christ is the Messiah.” Rabbi Pinchas Allouche reported a similar incident a year earlier. Charged with disorderly conduct and trespass, he pleaded guilty to criminal trespass on October 26, 2023, and received 11 months of unsupervised probation, a required anger management class, more than $600 in fines, and a suspended 30-day jail sentence.⁷⁶

He has not complied with those terms. On December 26, 2023, he announced on X that he was “retired.” Days later a Scottsdale prosecutor moved to revoke his probation for failing to pay fines, and when he missed the hearing an arrest warrant issued on January 2, 2024.⁶ He also skipped a Mesa probation hearing on February 15, 2024. He was arrested at the Arizona State Capitol on March 2, 2024, and spent five days in Mesa jail before release on March 6. Judge Umayok Novell warned that any further Mesa violation would trigger the remaining 55 days of his suspended sentence, with probation running until April 28, 2026. A Scottsdale probation violation hearing was set for April 5, 2024, with an additional 30 days at stake.⁸

Older matters round out the record: a 2018 Phoenix domestic-violence assault-with-intent-to-injure charge and a criminal damage charge, both dismissed without prejudice; a June 2021 extreme DUI guilty plea in Chandler; and a November 2021 Phoenix charge for driving on a suspended license, dismissed.⁴

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