The woman who said she was a victim of the man police called the "TikTok Trickster" talked exclusively with LEX 18 about how she helped lead police to him.
University of Kentucky Police said the man had warrants out for theft of property in Alabama, fraudulent use of a credit card in Arkansas, theft of a vehicle in Tennessee, and aggravated sexual assault of a child in Texas. Police said he used TikTok to develop relationships with women, then defraud them. It came to an end when a Kentucky woman said he came to stay with her, then she learned to turn the tables.
The woman didn't want to be identified. She's still upset over what happened. She said she was falling in love with him, but once she learned about the backstory police said he had, she was determined to catch him.
The love story blossomed quickly. The woman began talking with a man she knew as Jason Mitchell on TikTok and he came for a visit from his home in Alabama.
"We planned on him coming out and us hanging out for the weekend and things escalated and he ended up staying for a few weeks," she said. "We had made plans, going on vacation for spring break, buying a house, him moving up here until my girls were out of school."
She said as they spent time together, there were some red flags. She couldn't find anything about him when she Googled his name, but she figured she was being paranoid. She said she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"That's how you're raised, is to be good to people and others to be good to you," she said.
It was a spring break trip that unraveled everything. The woman said she, her girls, and Mitchell were going to Alabama, where he would get his vehicle and clothes to bring back to Kentucky. She said she gave him some money to valet the car at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, but he never came back.
"He calls and says he's being interrogated by the security at the airport for taking three females on a plane," she said.
In the meantime, she went to the ticket counter.
"She told me she didn't have anybody under that name, under my name, under my daughter's name, nobody's name. I was like, 'okay, something's not right," she said.
When she went to security to see what was going on, it hit her.
"I asked the security lady and when she told me that they didn't have anybody, I said, 'well…I guess I've been scammed,' and she said, 'sounds like it,'" she said.
The woman and her daughters found their car and headed home. On the way, she said she got a call from security at Blue Grass Airport.
"Told me that he left at 7:16 and got in a black SUV at the airport," she said.
Hours later, she said he reached back out, saying he was in the hospital. She said she decided to play along and asked him for the doctor's name. That name returned a match at UK Hospital, but when she went to investigate, there was no Jason Mitchell there. She kept up the girlfriend act, trying to get more clues.
"I played the game for a week, because I was bound and determined. I said, 'I love you, oh honey, I hope you get feeling better' and all of it," she said.
"How did you do that?" LEX 18 reporter Sean Moody asked.
"I'm a woman, I can lie!" she said, with a laugh.
Not long after, the whole thing exploded, thanks again, to TikTok.
"My friend was able to find a video and it had his picture, it had his name, his aliases, and everything on it on TikTok," she said. "It was like a light went off in my head, like, aha! This is what's going on. This is what I've been looking for."
Police in Kentucky worked with agencies in other states who were searching for him and who had his aliases. They went to the hospital armed with a driver's license photo and a new name - Brenton Fillers. Police said they found him there, and arrested him.
The whole experience has left the woman rattled, in part because she said her experience doesn't line up with anything the other women reported.
"He was a good person to me and that's what hurts so bad is the person that I was falling in love with is not the person that all of these women are talking about," she said. "There was good times, but they were all a lie. Nothing was true."
"It's one of those things that you don't think will ever happen to you, and it does happen to you and it's so mind-blowing that you can't make this up. There's no way in a million years I would have ever thought of this story," the woman said.
Fillers is at the Fayette County Detention Center. He declined an interview. There's no word yet on when he might be extradited to one of the states where he has warrants.
