Stanley Amalemba Ambeyi thought he was chatting with a woman when he logged into an online dating app in December 2024.
The interaction went on for days, and the “woman” on the other side of the screen offered to link him up with a 15-year-old niece, and at some point claimed to have handed the phone to the minor to start chatting with Ambeyi.
After being seemingly cautious in the chats, Ambeyi eventually gathered the courage to ask to spend a night with the 15-year-old. The chat degenerated into obscene talk, with Ambeyi offering to pay the minor $150 (Sh19,371) in return for the suggested sexual favours.
Ambeyi had actually been chatting with undercover security agents who are part of Operation Take Back America – an initiative to deport illegal immigrants from the US, while breaking apart transnational criminal rings.
The operation involves collaboration between the Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations – Atlanta, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Nashville Field Division.
Some of their operations involve posing as criminals in online forums or, like in the case of Ambeyi, minors soliciting for sex.
On December 19, 2024 Ambeyi left his residence in Birmingham, Alabama and drove a white Toyota Land Cruiser for nearly 80km to Blount County in Tennessee, thinking he would meet the minor and embark on a depraved escapade.
It would turn out that the security agents Ambeyi had been chatting with had directed him to a sting house – a venue authorities use to lure criminals to for purposes of effecting arrests.
Someone, a decoy, opened the door when Ambeyi knocked.
“Is this a bar or a house?” posed Mr Ambeyi, as the decoy asked him to feel at home and excused herself to go and get him a drink.
Several agents were in the house waiting to arrest Ambeyi. But so was Emmy Award TV show host Chris Hansen, whose investigations have over the years prevented several would-be sex crimes, and led to the arrest of over 500 offenders.
He was in the sting house, filming for his “Takedown with Chris Hansen” web series.
Hansen, sitting in one of the rooms, started asking Ambeyi a series of questions on the sex crime that the Kenyan man had come to commit.
Fed up with the interrogation, Ambeyi got up, prepared to leave.
But the security authorities arrested him and sat him down, allowing Hansen to continue questioning Ambeyi.
Ambeyi maintained that he was there to meet the minor’s aunt, but Hansen pulled chats from the online dating site.
Asked what he was doing to earn a living, Ambeyi said that he was a mechanic in Bessemer, Alabama and that he learned how to repair vehicles on YouTube.
When security agents searched Ambeyi, they found a loaded handgun. In the white Toyota Land Cruiser, Ambeyi had stored a machete, lubricant and condoms.
Ambeyi said he carried the weapons for self-defence as both his Birmingham hometown and Bessemer workplace were unsafe.
Commenting on this case, Mark Moon, a Sheriff who was involved in the arrest, said that it was a shame that people go to the country to live "the American dream" and commit crimes that ruin that opportunity.
“In the questioning, he admitted that, 'Yeah, I know that this is probably going to send me away from America,' eventually, when he gets out of prison,” Moon said an episode of Takedown with Chris Hansen which featured Ambeyi’s case.
On May 22, 2025 Ambeyi was among eight illegal individuals charged in a Huntsville, Alabama court with various immigration crimes.
“Stanley Amalemba Ambeyi, 38, a citizen of Kenya, was charged with being an alien in possession of a firearm,” the US Department of Justice said in a press statement after Ambeyi’s prosecution started.
“Based on the evidence received during today's hearing, the court finds that the Government has presented sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that the defendant committed the offense alleged in the Complaint,” Magistrate Judge Gray M Borden ruled.
“The defendant shall be detained pending final resolution of the charges against him or further order of the court and is committed to the custody of the attorney-general or his designated representative for confinement in a corrections facility separate, to the extent practicable, from persons awaiting or serving sentences or being held in custody pending appeal,” Justice Borden added.
