The Long Island vigilante group behind the videotaped high-profile bust of an accused perverted elementary-school music teacher says it has yet to receive its owed $25,000-plus payout from YouTube.
Michael Villani, head of the Long Island Predator Poachers group that allegedly caught Wading River teacher Mark Verity in a sting in October, told The Post that YouTube deleted his account, which had more than 47,000 subscribers, just days before he was owed the large sum from ad revenue generated by his videos and separate donations made to his channel.
“Our account was terminated on Nov. 16, YouTube was supposed to put the money in our account on the 21st,” Villani said.
Villani’s group said it has ensnared roughly 17 suspected pervs between Oct. 1 and Nov. 14,, including Verity, a married dad with two toddlers.
Verity’s highly publicized outing and arrest generated more than $6,000 alone for the vigilante group off ads that YouTube included in Poachers’ posted footage, Villani said. YouTube pays popular content creators a portion of the ad revenue it generates off such videos.
The group said YouTube owes it a total of $25,500 in such ad revenue and also donations that were made to its channel. Some donors sent hundreds of dollars to support the group.
“YouTube is actively preventing those who seek to protect kids from child predators and stealing from them as well as their supporters,” Villani told The Post.
A rep from YouTube defended the account’s deletion but did not respond to whether the group would be paid out the $25,500 it accrued from before the deletion or if refunds for the group’s donors would be issued.
“The channel in question was correctly terminated from YouTube for repeated violations of our Community Guidelines, which prohibit portraying in-person sting operations designed to accuse someone of egregious misconduct with a minor, without the presence of law enforcement,” the representative said.
Typically, YouTube operates on a three-strike system. Villani denied violating the rules multiple times and said the channel received just one strike a few days before the account was nuked.
He said the strike was for a short-form video that didn’t fully show the police presence in the camera despite them being there, which is required to be depicted for this type of content, according to YouTube’s terms of service.
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The group has made it clear that the police are involved in every sting they do and said it was a momentary lapse that the cops were not depicted properly in the video.
After receiving the strike, the group deleted the video — but just days later, their account was gone, followed by their appeal being denied and now the dough in limbo.
“My biggest hope with this is that YouTube changes their policy,” Villani said.
Verity has been charged with trying to send sexual messages to a minor and attempting to involve a child in a sex act.
