I Went Undercover To Stop A Repeat Sex Offender

Online verification is vital. A blue check comes with bragging rights for the person who acquires it and peace of mind for all who interact with them.

A blue check helped convince nearly 100,000 followers across multiple platforms to accept New_Kid_Official AKA "Stevie" as a teenage gamer from Schenectady, New York. Stevie spent the last three years building a following of children on several social media apps including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Bigo, Hago, Zepeto, and Zigazoo. Most notably, he enjoyed top-ranking status on Likee, a video-sharing platform with similar capabilities to TikTok. He was featured on their main page on multiple occasions.

Have you ever heard of Likee? I hadn't either. I teach workshops for high schoolers a few times a year, and at this point, I've yet to come up with a single student who has heard of the app. So, who are the 150 million monthly users on there? That's a great question.

From a birds-eye view, it seems like Likee and TikTok would be quite similar, but they're not. While it's common knowledge that the internet is home to unspeakable dangers, Likee takes things to a whole other level. If TikTok is an urban neighborhood, Likee is the red-light district. Among many issues at hand, the intermingling of adults and children is alarming; there is an odd culture on the app, almost akin to a big friendly family reunion; one where elders have negligently failed to warn the kids about creepy Uncle Mitch or the basic concepts of safety.

Enter New_Kid_Official, a teenage boy who managed to swoop in and enchant thousands with his mission of protecting kids from a dangerous world while entertaining them with low-brow potty humor.

New_Kid_Official (also known as Stevie) has been a fixture on Likee since 2021. He is known for his bold, irreverent videos, and is heralded for devoting a large part of his platform to child safety. He is also the architect of an anti-bullying community called The Dino Squad. With his own Linktree and an organized system of regularly scheduled Roblox gift card giveaways, calling Stevie industrious seems like an understatement. Rather, it's almost as if he has the experience and skill set of a middle-aged adult - probably because he is one.

You see, it turns out, that New_Kid_Official is not 16, nor is his real name Stevie; it's Donald S. Hammalian Jr.

Hammalian is a 49-year-old repeat sex offender whose previous stints in prison seem to have been exclusively related to the illegal possession and potential trading of child porn images. This time, he has done something different; something worse. While his previous charges indicate that he took part in engaging with illegal material, Hammalian has essentially spent the last three years building a network of children to engage with directly.

How did I get involved in all of this? I wasn't out looking for New Kid. I was hosting a live chat on TikTok about an adjacent issue of public concern when an anonymous viewer showed up in the chat to warn me that "Stevie" was angry with me. He'd even made an accompanying video, lip-syncing the words, "Someone made my best friend cry, doo-dah, doo-dah! Now that someone's gonna die…"

The 200+ viewers in my TikTok live and I watched this video together in real-time and we all had similar reactions. We were unnerved - not at a teenager being silly, but at a fully-grown man making threats with a hammer in his hand and a dinosaur mask obscuring his face. While most of us agreed about what we were seeing, no one knew what to do.

"What power do any of us have to influence this situation?" some of my viewers asked, after seeing the disturbing video.

I believe we not only have power here, but responsibility.

On a personal level, I was scared knowing someone felt compelled and entitled to threaten my life. It was also immediately apparent that there were other elements at play; just a pile of red flags right there, out in the open. There was no question of whether this needed to be looked at. And as it would have made for a strange police call, I knew that my only hope was to look into it myself. I firmly believed and still believe that no one else was going to see this story through.

For many of us who came to be invested in this particular case, we were once the kids whose stories fell through the cracks. We learned firsthand that help was not coming unless we were the ones to offer it. And that is what inspired a bunch of strangers to devote enormous amounts of time to researching this story, brainstorming, and trying to figure out a way to prove what we already knew to be true.

Nearly 18 months after beginning this journey, I'm relieved that a bit of justice has been served; Hammalian has been in jail since November of 2023. But it took a long time.

Stevie was good at what he did; so good that he could spot a suspicious adult across any chatroom. After being blocked a few times, I decided to try a new tactic. I created a decoy character on Likee and Zepeto that said I was a student. Stevie suddenly greeted me by name when I entered his live streams, laughed at my jokes, and liked my posts.

I hoped that my undercover "teen" role would yield something helpful, but to be honest, Stevie's private interactions mirrored what he showed people in public. It was no surprise to learn that he was a graduate of Emerson College. He was charismatic, unbothered by conflict, and self-assured in a way that only comes with age.

People would occasionally come into the room and rudely accuse him of being an adult, but he had his Dino Squad so well-trained that he didn't even have to acknowledge that type of discourse. "He's just tall," someone would say combatively as if the thought that Stevie was an actual grown adult was insane.

After all, he was verified.

How did that happen? How was "Stevie" allowed to be verified? Likee has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment, leaving their verification requirements mysterious. But for many on the app, verification is accomplished through a partnership with a Likee "agency" - an oddly undefined role, considering how many people seem to operate these business ventures.

Many of Stevie's profiles listed "LUX" - a Likee agency run by Tina, a large creator with a six-figure following on Likee. She is known for her account, Tina_and_Me, which was sometimes featured on Stevie's page. He addressed Tina as his "Likee mom", even going so far as to send multiple care packages to her home, which she and her daughter unboxed on camera. The level at which Stevie managed to infiltrate into the lives of his Likee "family" members suggests a major need for serious conversations regarding what precautions might be wise to take when engaging with others we've only met online.

I reached out to Tina, who shared that Stevie did not work with her, but disclosed that he provided her with (now understood to be false) documentation regarding his age.

Whether any of Likee's executives knew the truth or not, several adults on the app repeatedly vouched for Stevie's age, even when directly confronted by concerned viewers who told them he was a grown man. This created a level of protection for Stevie and vulnerability for the children he preyed on.

The public narrative was that Stevie and his girlfriend were nice, wholesome kids who planned to wait until they were 18 to meet; their relationship was depicted as incredibly innocent. This honestly made things scarier, pushing forward the logical reality that there had to be a long game. And when Stevie's girlfriend posted that she was turning 16 (and of age in her state) it became even more urgent to get this case looked at.

In August of 2023, I supplied law enforcement with documentation of every detail regarding "Stevie" that I had.

"I don't have his name," I told them. "But here's what I do have."

I gave them pictures of the meticulous handwriting Stevie had revealed in a post about his video schedule. I presented them with the odd, dated references he made. I shared clips that illustrated the mature language choices he used, and how the timbre of his voice did not match that of a teenage boy. I sent them detailed info about his public, year-long romantic relationship with a teenage girl.

Plus, I suggested that they just, you know, look at him. Stevie's content and choices were convincing enough to call him out, but the biggest giveaway was probably his body; even if he was one of those teens who hit puberty early, he would not have failed to grow between ages 14 and 16.

My findings didn't feel like enough, and I wasn't confident my reports would be taken seriously, but a special agent reached out in September with some follow-up questions, and Stevie was locked up eight weeks later.

When Stevie's ex-girlfriend outed Hammalian by name and began talking about what had happened to her, several young adults on Likee came forward to help expose the shamed creator. Meanwhile, every single adult on the site who has spoken about this has feigned shock at the fact that Stevie was a grown man the whole time.

I understand that people didn't see what was right in front of them. What I don't understand is why the voices of those who fight to be heard always seem to be ignored.

So, how do we do better? We listen. And after we've heard what is happening, we see if any adjustments can be made. This is how change happens.

Will any adjustments be made here to avoid similar events from happening in the future? Will the multiple social media sites that verified this man speak and acknowledge what was able to happen here, or will they continue removing every trace of Stevie's existence? I'm not holding my breath for anyone in a position of power to facilitate a conversation about this, and it's a shame because that's a large part of why it will continue to happen.

The children who made up Stevie's Dino Squad were groomed - but not in the way the media depicts grooming. They were groomed slowly, a common tactic that rarely receives any discussion. This is not the story we see depicted on SOSA's "Undercover Underage" or reruns of the legendary To Catch A Predator. Those shows are wonderful and they do a great job sharing one type of grooming but that isn't always what it looks like.

This is not the story of a child being lured away by the boogeyman. This is the even scarier story of a charismatic man who became so trusted by his online friends that some of them were unable to believe he was an adult, even after they were told directly by law enforcement. This is the story of a group of children who still don't fully understand what happened to them, or what could have happened, had this been able to continue.

The kids of Likee had no defense against what Hammalian fed them. He was the Pied Piper, armed with a beautiful melody, designed precisely to captivate a large audience of children and impressionable adults.

Meanwhile, here lies perhaps the scariest thing. The kids Stevie groomed are now considered safe in his absence, and yet most of them continue to engage publicly and privately with grown-ups who employ the same tactics he did.

For the parents of these children - for the parents of any children… I urge you to consider looking more closely at the ways your children are interacting online. As for what is happening on Likee, I can promise you this is not the only unsettling truth this site has been harboring.

And how was a 49-year-old man able to groom and date children undetected? He wasn't. I'm not the only one who knew he was an adult. I'm just the one who refused to walk away without saying it. This is what it means to "See something, Say something." It's not a cute slogan, it's a life-or-death responsibility.