JinBop: The Minecraft YouTuber Arrested By The FBI

One question I often get asked is why why do I make my videos about online demons out of everything well a big part of it and a big part of why so many others do similar content isn’t just because it’s entertainment but also because these videos are often devices

For awareness and Justice in fact they’ve almost become a necessity due to the current consequences of being an online predator and a large content creator the power that comes from such a position is immense and exploiting that position for predatory means upon young fans who totally adore and idolize them

Is a scary Prospect it also doesn’t exactly help the platform such as YouTube seem to act very sporadically with these situations punishing these kinds of videos with age restrictions whilst taking years to deliver real punishment upon those who deserve it in fairness most the time these situations

Don’t have the involvement in the legal system so YouTube can’t exactly be sure except this case that we’re covering today did have exactly that and yet the person’s channel is still up in 2016 a pretty relevant figure in an area I looked on today with Nostalgia suddenly

Disappeared for weeks on end and as the internet dug deeper and deeper the true disgusting story of what this individual been doing was revealed explicit and immeasurably horrifying actions that have got a Minecraft YouTuber on the radar of the FBI so what really happened to jinbop Thank you before we talk about what ginbop did we first need to start with the man himself Starlet Zhao born November 18 1992 in the state of Washington USA to parents of Chinese descent all the information about him testifiers that Jim Bob lived in Washington for all his life and during

The third grade was good friends with another kid called Adam we’ll get back to that later during school Jin took up a particular interest in drama his original dream was singing But after giving up on that due to his technical abilities he instead decided to pick up

Acting in college noting that he had a passion to entertain but acting wasn’t where his heart really was and he began to discover other outlets as they waited to fulfill that passion the first ever account of jimbop online was actually through a different name and on a different website that being deviantART

The account waffle z42 was made around 2011 and features the earliest pictures of Jim Bob online that we’ve ever seen as well as his drawings his bio reads as follows favorite genre of music trance c-pop K-pop MP3 player of choice wish I had one someone want to buy me an iPod

Favorite cartoon character gear personal quote life is a [ __ ] my [ __ ] it’s kind of surreal to see this a traversing through an Internet Graveyard of sorts but one where Jim Bob also reveals the origins of his name that being poured from the character Jin kasaragi from the

Video game series plus blue but from the post history it seemed as if he quickly got bored of this and moved on from it so he finally made a YouTube channel and started uploading Vlogs initially Jin didn’t have a firm grasp of knowledge of YouTube which at the time was a

Relatively new societal aspect he understood how to use it but wasn’t really in touch with the community inside so much so that he actually recalled meeting Markiplier in a bar and talking to him without having any idea who he was I’ve told the story a couple

Of times before and I’ll tell it again just because it is relevant um I met Markiplier once at a Christmas party I think around in 2013. around the time I started up my channel but by then I wasn’t posting videos I didn’t post videos for another half year after and

The awkward thing is I didn’t know who he was I just sort of sat there and I talked with him and I was like ah yeah cool dude that’s awesome cool but in reality I didn’t know anything about gaming YouTube back then so this whole

World just sort of opened up to me the moment I started uploading videos like I had no idea there was this side of YouTube I mean I’d heard of PewDiePie but who hadn’t at that point but then you know I started seeing communities I started you know seeing these panels I

Started seeing these events and that’s when it all became a little bit more real for me and I was like all right yeah this is amazing and this is something that I really want to be a part of by the end of 2013 Jin had abandoned his short-lived vlogging

Channel as he felt it wasn’t really for him and he began to drift away from YouTube entirely but it was during this time that he reconnected with some of his oldest friend including that the old third grade friend called Adam that we mentioned full name Adam Dahlberg or as

He’s more well known Sky Does Minecraft game called cops and robbers and I am where where Sky Does Minecraft or he’s all by himself look at him ow I will hit you again I will kill you I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m here with Beijing Canadian who’s by himself as well yes Jim Bob’s

Childhood friend was one of the fastest growing YouTubers on the platform and just a year away from creating one of the most popular YouTube groups of his time without being Team Crafted Sky success is really interested Jim buffkin according to him had opened his heart to the gaming scene on YouTube inspiring

Him to make content again this time with an entirely new and flourishing Community either that or he just wanted money but on December 13th 2013 junebok took the leap and created his channel under the name gymbop gaming and the first video that’s public to watch is Minecraft Beginnings uploaded on July

The 13th 2014. for all this Falls you see later it has to be said that ginbop was a relatively hard-working Creator he uploaded a lot of videos during 2014 an average of around five to six videos a week but in a landscape of Let’s Plays this was relative simply drowned out and

Whilst Jin but was growing steadily his channel wasn’t anything that stood out his personality was really just a clone of what was popular at the time even addressing that aspect in his first video hey what’s popping my name is Jim Bob welcome to the channel to get things

Started I have for you today a let’s play more specifically a let’s play of Minecraft I know original right shocking anyway I don’t spend too much time staring at the menu so let’s just get right into it over the next year jinbot would play a variety of games from CS go

To Payday 2 to GTA 5 and although this did grow his channel decently that seemed to really be his Peak if Jim Bob’s career continued this way for the rest of his life then it’s likely that he would it’s been a forgotten photo in history however a Hail Mary had

Descended due to internal fighting with team crafted Skye who had mostly been a distant friend due to his workload and slow start drifting away from the team during the late 2014 and was looking to make plans for his own group of Minecraft youtubers who he could be

Closer with this was later to be Sky medium and sky already begun looking for Crater to join one of which was jinbop in September 2014 the two collaborated on videos and continued to work more closely over time as thanks to the prospect of collaborating with one of

The biggest YouTubers at the time Jim Bob’s sub count sprung up to 10K in October 2014 and he suddenly became a lot more well-known hey what’s popping Jim Bob here guys today was something a little unique and a little wacky wacky wacky today I got Mount Your Friends and of course you

Need friends to play this game so I brought along a friend of man scared as Minecraft or Adam you can call me gin Bob gaming but it’s also important to note here that his popularity stemmed mostly from Sky which makes a big difference here Not only would that

Aspect cause divisions later on but it also offered a possible explanation for why so many people forgot about him entirely as for now though the two had some big plans brewing and in early 2015 Sky media was officially established as a new outlet for Content creation ginbop

Moved into the house along the sky and many other fellow members including your Paras and that guy Barney and it was during this time that jinbot produced some of his most iconic and well-received content in the Minecraft videos he participated in for the next few months though most of them are now

Gone off Skye’s Channel some have survived three uploads however even at this stage some shady stuff was still going on tim.tv be one of the editors of the sky media house recently recollected a foreshadowing experience he had at the sky media office when he last Saw Jim

Bob during 2015. gin used to be at the office as late as me and I was always wondering what he was up to I checked and he was talking to fans on Skype which I thought was pretty weird because they were literal kids I brought this up

To management and was told to mind my own business and edit I remember fans openly talking about being in Skype calls with gin on the TeamSpeak until late and watching anime together and [ __ ] I didn’t think it was weird I just thought it was cool I was 15 their

Biggest [ __ ] regret of my life that I didn’t speak up about it then point in case it was very strange how close jinbot was to his fans of course fan interaction is everything and nowadays you kind of expect creators to be active with their fans but back during 2015

This was weird I mean even now the idea of an adult content creator staying on these long night calls with his fan base of tweens is incredibly dodgy but management I’m likely Sky himself ignored complaints probably because Skye wanted a control around his team of creators that were stronger than Team

Crafted but even that wasn’t achievable one of the establishing things that Sky did for more control around Sky meters members was through direct ownership of their channels and this fate particularly befell your pal Ross as Sky purchased his childhood Channel and transformed it into the business oriented couch potatoes colliding with

Many other business decisions related to Sky media and another argument within the newly created Vision Squad this had persuaded Ross and two editors to move out the house but more importantly to this story this also persuaded ginbop to leave Sky media in early 2016 although not for this exact same reasons as heard

On Twitch streams of his gin Bob didn’t really want to do his whole career in the shadow of sky and wanted to build a view base for himself or to directly quote the man I was tired of being that guy who recorded the video to skydo’s Minecraft ginbop also officially cited

Personal issues as his reason to leave with those issues ranging from the drama with your pal Ross or the fact that jinbad allegedly broken up with his alleged girlfriend Becky backy the latter is only a rumor though I don’t want to send some poor girl misinformation and harassment

Because it’s only a rumor now I don’t particularly like talking about personal issues so I’ll just say that there’s been a lot of them there’s a bunch of stuff that I need to sort out first now I’m not trying to say that you guys aren’t important to me or that I’ve

Forgotten about you because that’s not the case you guys are important to me you guys all matter it’s just that lately I’ve been struggling with a lot and it’s probably fair to say that I’m actually at the lowest point I’ve ever been in my life but you know like that’s all fine

Struggling is okay we all come to that point where we just feel so helpless and lost that we have a hard time justifying it all and that’s just sort of where I am right now and with that Jin Bob moved back to his home in Bellevue and continued his content production on his

Own leaving with decent terms with Skye although falling out of touch with him and continue on the same path he’d been going on from then on ginbop never appeared in any of Sky’s videos ever again and the reality of the situation was that many of those 300 000

Subscribers that Jimbo had now gained was just growing dead weight Jimbo realized he wasn’t exactly self-made and essentially wheeled off the back of the most influential Gaming use for the time after all why is it that when you search for Jimbo’s most viewed video the most

Viewed of them is a video with 500 000 views on a Channel with 300 000 subscribers ginbop really didn’t have any personality his videos could be cropped out any other person with only an appeal to those who are fans of sky and throughout 2016 he worked hard to

Wipe that idea clean and reform his channel but his channel was dying without Sky’s promotion he had been too over-reliant as he tried to regain his audience working day in day out trying to stop a rat this work continued from his Hiatus to a sudden end in August

When after consistent uploads for months he suddenly disappeared and in the coming months the friendly and bubbly exterior of jinbar would be peeled back and instead what we were given is a truly sick individual is calling this was actually recommended to me by my good friend Ethan also known

As crank gameplays he said it’s a sort of a game that’s about dating through the it’s getting into a call with this girl so um that brings some memories for me because the first love that I ever had was sort of over the internet from here on out everything in this

Segment is sourced from the criminal complaint that was sent to the East Michigan district court by the FBI this document can be found publicly via a Kotaku article and also via Scribd around the summer of 2015 gin Bob got in contact with a girl who has been kept

Anonymous for this video for reference at the time I’m getting in contact the girl was 14. Jim Bob was 23. originally this girl was a fan of Jim Bob and had been providing with assistance on videos with the SkyHouse as well as his own channel in particular producing art from

Her link for socials were even found in some of Skye’s videos Jim Bob and this girl were frequently chatting over Skype but their friendship soon turned to a relationship foreshadowed by a tweet from a witness I was in a Skype call with him and one of the victims he was

Convicted of grooming it’s truly baffling to me now I just sat there as they flirted and he played his guitar for us looking back I wondered why no one ever stopped him from doing that around February 2016 the girl’s parents noticed that she began to exhibit types of behavior she normally wouldn’t do

Such as asking your parents to buy clothes that showed off for parts of her body more furthermore her parents noticed that she wasn’t even wearing the clothing outside the house but instead it lay on the floor of a bedroom near her computer desk and most concerningly the girl began wearing a locket around

Her neck with a picture of ginbop inside with all this considered the Gill’s parents became incredibly concerned for her and their fears were confirmed when they secretly recorded a call between her and ginbop in this call you could hear ginbop telling his victim to strip her clothes off and giving advice to the

Girl on grooming her Jim Bob also acknowledges the girl’s age which just as a reminder is 14. fast forward to March when on a call with the girl Jim Bob discusses the possibility of her convincing her parents to take a family vacation to Florida so they can meet up

This was around the time that the girl’s parents notified the FBI the concerns and from here on out a lot becomes clearer on May the 20th 2016 a 37 minute video call on Skype between the girl and Jim Bob was recorded by the FBI in the

Call a number of things happened Jim Bob has abandoned his plan for meeting up in Florida and discusses trying to convince the girl’s parents to let her travel from a home to Michigan to Seattle near General’s home in Bellevue Jim Bob had also offered to rent her a hotel room If

She traveled the two also talk about how the minimum age to work in Washington is 16 years old and the girl is only 14 right now discussing how they would handle their future relationship however out of everything Jim Bob’s detailed sexual conversations with a 14 year old are unsurprisingly the worst to call

Jump up on the girl talk about her performing oral sex on Jim Bob she says that she’s never done this and asked Jim Bob how to do it and he gives an explanation Jim Bob also asked later in the call if he will be her first referring to her first sexual partner

And then asks her if he can kiss her in between her legs Jim Bob then says you should take off some clothes for me I was buying your underwear gonna give it a kiss and the girl obliges to his request exposing herself to ginbop on camera disgusting stuff I know but uh

Don’t say I didn’t warn you importantly with this call the FBI are able to easily determine the Gin Bob had committed a crime the solicitation of CP and they are ready to now begin tracking him as FBI agents monitor the many calls between Jim Bob and the girl from May to

June the others sought to find out his details on June 26th Jim Bob’s IP address was identified and finding out it was connected to Comcast the FBI submitted an administrative subpoena or for more simpler definitions a request for information to the company four days later Comcast obliged and gave him

Everything which included Jim Bob’s name address telephone and email they also cross-referenced the Man team the call with that of National Crime databases and confirmed that this was their man they had found him on July the 1st 2016 Jim Bob and the girl once again discussed the prospect of them meeting

Up and since she wasn’t allowed to travel to Washington Jim Bob suggested that he could travel to Michigan to meet the girl and just like clockwork 20 days later he booked a flight from Seattle Washington to Detroit Michigan on July the 25th 2016 during a call between jump

Up and the girl Jim Bob says you’re going to give your first [ __ ] in a little over a week now I think you’re going to be much better at it during the same call the girl also asked Jim Bob if he’s in love with her Jim Bob says no

And doesn’t have love on his mind in response the girl says that he’ll see differently when he gets to Michigan and Jimbo responds by saying baby good sex will do that to me yeah yeah I’ll treat you like my lover while I’m there Jim Bob adds this by saying maybe in four

Years you’ll be my girlfriend the girl questions why she has to wait so long and Jimbo creates himself by saying three years and finally on August 2nd 2016 the FBA submitted a criminal complaint to The District Court requesting an arrest warrant for him and they were granted that on the perfect

Date news first broke of Jim Bob’s actions during early September of 2016 when the YouTuber scarce reported on it in a video of his talking about what happened the court found probable cause to believe that the defendant committed the crimes a receipt of child pornography production of child

Pornography online enticement of a minor and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual activity drama alert was quick to follow with that video talking about the situation as well a YouTuber with over 400 000 and subscribers known as Jim Bob has fallen off the face of

The Earth he’s been missing for about a month no uploads no tweets well allegedly this is because he’s been like in jail he’s been in custody and he’s been going through court because he produced child poor both videos are now unavailable on YouTube today as they’ve both been deleted by the original

Creators the reason for this is unclear but at best guess it may have been a request from the authorities to keep the situation on the down low as not to affect Jim Bob’s trial another big Creator who also made a video on Jim Bob was I’m Alex whose video you can still

Watch today probably because the authorities can’t really go that International and some information was found that basically said that the bloke is on trial for making child pornography incredible as for June’s friend Skye the only thing you’ve tweeted about the case publicly was a simple wow he later

Addressed the situation in early 2017 on a live stream discussing his posturing and contact with jinbar uh what happened to jinbop see I don’t [ __ ] know me and Jen stopped talking uh ages ago um like about a year and two three months ago real long time ago

Um I think his last video was uploaded 10 months ago so it was like a year before that I stopped talking to him Um the only things I know about the entire situation is that he was arrested person pretty [ __ ] up [ __ ] this is where I’m about to get controversial um so get ready for this this could either end my career or prove that I’m very um very being very real with you guys um

I don’t think I never thought jyn was that bad of a guy when I knew that could end my career see the thing is you have to think about things that you’re saying like this type of [ __ ] and whether or not it will like ruin your career for being honest um I

I didn’t dislike Jen when I knew him um and uh it’s not my fault or um has anything to do with me what happened to him so however as we’ve briefly covered before this may be more than meets the eye as Tim dot TV a former Sky media employee said that his questions

About Jim Bob’s Behavior were again rejected by management who just told him to carry on working if they intervened at the time this whole situation could have been avoided another allegation also states that when Jim Bob was arrested in August Sky knew and instructed everyone not to say anything

About it until it became widespread information back to ginbop here’s his last public video One whale at a time is still up today and has many comments on it before deriding and mocking the predator in a kind of dark but still kind of funny way another video that

Also got a lot of attention following Jim Bob’s arrest was an old q a video called I’m getting arrested and reading mean comments finally a YouTuber who doesn’t clickbait Jin stop hitting your mic look what a man does with his microphone is a very private matter leave it

Between me and my mic okay uncomfortable but General really was hated from every angle many of his friends just came out to publicly just [ __ ] on him even if they knew that he didn’t have access to the internet however contrary to the actions of people like lionmaker Jim Bob’s channel

Was never hugely messed with after he went to jail barring a few anomalies which can be viewed on socialblade like this sudden loss of 400 000 views what happened there did a video gets striked by YouTube or did someone delete a video for Jim Bob’s Channel and if so who we

May never know arguably the darkest element of the situation though was the treatment of the victim following the arrest many of the fans of Jim Bob actually managed to find the social media of the victim and began harassing her with questions and insults throwing blame at essentially a 15 year old now

Today this would be unspeakable and unheard of but back then there were a fair few reasons why this girl was just completely harassed for one this was an incredibly politically divided Time online the times when me too and gamergate were fully in their peaks and many people had a different attitude

Back then and secondly it worth noting that Jim Bob’s fans are children people normally around the age of 10 to 13. people who only see the world in black and white people who idolize their favorite creators and people who can’t exactly understand legal documents all the way to the situation as depressing

As this reaction was it’s worth at least acknowledging that our attitudes towards victims coming out have changed drastically almost viscerally to the other side of the pendulum where people instead believe all accusations however I think everyone agrees that if someone is arrested for preying on a minor with legal documents then those allegations

Are probably true but jinbop told a different story to his fellow cell mates on the 13th of September 2016 Kotaku officially reported that Jim Bob had been arrested he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his crime and incarcerated at Terminal Island in San Pedro California with a release date of

The 25th of July 2023 jimbot began his long stay not a lot is known about Jim Bob’s time during jail mostly because Bob he’s in jail there’s not that many verifiable sources but of the two we have one is nothing but a rumor in speculation whilst the other is a

Comment from someone on YouTube who claims to have been in jail on Terminal Island but first the rumor as this wasn’t the victim who came out rather experienced but rather the FBI taking action the girl herself was pretty annoyed the police had taken Jim Bob away she changed her Twitter bio to by

The way I still and always will love him and it’s a rumored to Jim Bob and this girl while still sending letters to each other as late as 2018. however there are a few holes to poke on that theory such as the fact that none of the details of

These letters were ever released and also how would these letters even get through in the first place I mean prison security FBI monitoring the United States Postal Service being even more easy to manage on the internet I don’t know if this is particularly true the other source of information is

From an individual who commented on another video about ginbob made by a YouTuber called cluedome the person here who calls himself Tony T drops a lot of information about his account of Jim Bob as a person during his jail time that’s crazy I just got released from federal correction institutional terminal Island

Where I in fact was in the same unit as Zhao or Jim Bob as you call him he definitely told a whole different story that he wasn’t there for crossing state lines with his then girlfriend who by the way is still his girlfriend and waiting for him so they were dating and

Her parents are cool with it until her father got mad on him for whatever reason and put the feds on him that his girlfriend her mother since moved on away from the father and all due to what he did to him he did admit to her being

Underage but that’s why you just keep it to a certain level but this is the first I hear about the child porn stuff if that was brought out into life in the facility no one would have even [ __ ] with him talked to him or anything unless it was the other Charmers in

There [ __ ] now I even feel some type of way for talking to him I found this video because he used to brag about all the followers he had and whatnot I would have actually sent a word back in there about this but he was released for like

Two months before me he should be in a halfway house as we speak heard a good one [ __ ] played everyone in there if this is true [ __ ] guy when questioned about how ginbop was able to get out of jail Tony had just the same and got out early because we took this program

Called rdap residential drug awareness program but it was more like psychology courses of course he passed easy because he’s pretty smart but he would use his fake story all the time to try and get sympathy from other people didn’t really work though because anyone they were

Children would look at him like a piece of [ __ ] no matter what he said unlike me I got kicked out of the program for not making up a story and not wanting to talk about family issues the [ __ ] why would I do that right that’s why it’s

Called family issues they stay in the family well that and they really didn’t like that I would kind of glorify my drug dealing and transport Adventures LOL but luckily when I got kicked out Biden’s new FSA ACT first step act kicked in for me and they let me go

Early or else I would have been in there for another year FSA wouldn’t have worked for jail because he was a sex offender he would actually gone even earlier if he had an overdose on K2 spice one night he literally started dancing in circles whilst pissing and

[ __ ] on himself LOL that [ __ ] was funny he got sent to the shoe for two weeks after that and then artists extend the program another two months yep you heard it right here Jim Bob overdosed on spice and danced in circles while pissing and cheating on himself how

Fitting now again this could just be some random commenter but I do actually kind of believe this this is probably personal opinion but not only is it like a profile picture and typing mannerisms a convincing Factor but the information here is so detailed that if someone did

Make this up they should get hired as an author and it also shows the side of Jim Bob though no one really saw either in the legal papers or his videos that being his ability to manipulate everyone around him and how easy it is to lie I’m not saying it’s not understandable to

Lie hell if I was in that position admitting to solicitation of CP would be the last thing I would do but what I’m saying is that the fact he was able to and he was so skilled at it is pretty interesting it’s a pretty interesting feat in itself and as you’ve seen from

Tony T’s testimony on the 2nd of June 2022 Jim Bob was released a year early from prison for good behavior because well the American penal system serving us time and being released from prison with our findings of the discussing nature and decrepit desires of a pretty big channel in the Minecraft Community

The question remains now why does ginbop still have a channel up despite being a convicted offender who drew in his victim via his YouTube channel I mean it’s a very valid question numerous channels before have been terminative actions just like that of Jin yet his channel still exists today listen when

It comes to the subject of free speech I’d say I’m pretty relaxed about it and like I’m anti-deep platform for most things but cases like Jim Bob are where I draw the line because now it doesn’t matter about what’s being said but who’s saying it and that person can easily

Upload like nothing ever happened and still have a cult following which he can exploit proven before where people such as lionmaker who got a harrowingly positive reception upon his return at the end of the day I don’t ask for much but I think YouTuber moving yet another

Convicted predator of its side is a big priority especially one who’s been recently released from prison so until next time say Toaster [Applause] Thank you