The gaming platform Roblox has been at the center of controversy for the past year, due to allegedly being used as a hub for child grooming, which left the platform as the defendant in over 35 lawsuits last year, including a case against the state of Louisiana.
Currently, attorney Mike Mandell, also known as Law by Mike on social media, is partnering with Schlep, a Roblox YouTuber and predator buster, in a lawsuit against the game’s platform. Currently, he is representing 800 victims.
Schlep has over 2.8 million followers on YouTube and has built his platform on taking down online child predators and educating the public on the dangers of online platforms. Schlep does undercover work, taking inspiration from Chris Hansen, by creating decoy accounts to lure and expose predators, some leading to arrests and prosecution.
Schlep himself was a victim of grooming on Roblox by an unidentified game developer. He has been vocal that his experience, along with others, is the reason he started exposing predators.
On Aug. 9, 2025, Roblox sent Schlep a cease-and-desist letter, alleging his methods violated the platform’s terms of service and “actively interfered” with established safety protocols. His accounts were permanently banned, and Roblox warned continued activity could prompt legal action against him.
Roblox argued Schlep’s approach, creating accounts that impersonated minors and directing conversations off-platform, risked exposing users to harm and undermining internal moderation systems. This accumulated into a “vigilante” ban as their response to the situation.
“Similar to actual predators, they often impersonated minors, actively approached other users, then tried to lead them to other platforms to have sexually explicit conversations (which is against our Terms of Use),” Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief safety officer, said in a statement.
Schlep, for his part, rejected Roblox’s characterization of his work as “vigilantism,” insisting his methods mirrored those used by law enforcement and that he consistently coordinated with authorities before publishing evidence.
Schlep’s ban caused severe online backlash, and the ban resulted in Roblox losing $12 billion in revenue overnight.
Thousands of content creators and social media users came out in defense of Schlep, creating the hashtag “FreeSchlep,” as Schlep himself reacted online to the news of the reasoning for his ban.
“Roblox responded now directly to me,” Schlep said. “When did I ever ‘take the law’ into my own hands? We work with law enforcement, we have six arrests of child predators in your community. Why did you do nothing about felony child predator arrests we were sending you? What a joke.”
X user, @BoostSonicYT, criticized Roblox and its CEO, saying they were blatantly lying.
“‘We work with law enforcement.’ That’s some good a— [lies] if I've ever heard one. The sheer audacity to say they're in the right, while Schlep has done more right for this community, while Roblox did nothing, that's David and a heartless corporate business for you. #FreeSchlep.”
While the internet was reeling from the announcement, Roblox contacted Schlep to try to smooth over the situation.
In a video titled “Roblox Contacted me…,” Schlep details the full series of events leading to the banning of his accounts, Roblox’s handling of the situation and the intimidation he is under from the platform.
After a year of trying to communicate with Roblox, Roblox bypassed his lawyers to contact him directly just before the Louisiana lawsuit was filed, calling the move inappropriate and performative.
In the brief exchange, Kaufman emailed Schlep to offer him a way to stay “active in the Roblox community.” However, he did not take the offer.
“Maybe I could have come back to Roblox,” Schlep said. “But if a company can’t agree to something as basic as speaking in good faith, then there’s something deeper going wrong here. I will not trade my voice for a few Roblox accounts.”
While all of this has been taking place online, causing negative backlash for the platform, CEO David Baszucki addressed the public’s safety concerns.
In a September 2025 interview with CNBC, Roblox CEO David Baszucki announced the last safety features to be added to the platform. Roblox added artificial intelligence age estimation safety checks, live selfies and ID checks. The feature was added gradually across servers internationally in December 2025.
However, Baszucki is under fire for his comments about child safety on an episode of the New York Times podcast, “Hard Fork Podcast,” where he was asked what he thought the problem of predators on the platform was.
This added to the concerns of Roblox players under the age of 18, along with Baszucki’s plan to eventually add an adult dating feature to Roblox.
