According to documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, a 23-year old man from Compton was sentenced Wednesday to nine years in federal prison. In his plea agreement. Derrick Patterson, admitted to using LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr to find and rob five victims in the greater Los Angeles area, from June 2021 to March 2022. In a previous report that was released by the LA Times, prosecutors stated that Patterson was suspected of having committed over 20 similar crimes since 2019.
In court documents, authorities claim that Patterson would plan to meet with his victims at their homes or in hotel rooms for sexual encounters. He would then ask to use their phones and transfer significant amounts of money to himself via Venmo or other banking apps.
Prosecutors detailed a 2021 instance where Patterson asked to use the victims phone and then had sex with the victim as a distraction while trying to transfer money to himself. When the victim became suspicious and spoke out, Patterson allegedly threatened him with a kitchen knife before venmoing $4,000 to himself from the victims phone. This was reportedly followed by Patterson contacting the victim’s family impersonating him and requesting that they send him money.
In early 2022, Patterson reportedly entered another victim’s home with a stun gun to demand money and jewelry. Prosecutors claim that Patterson then used the victim’s phone to open a line of credit at Goldman Sachs.
Patterson was sentenced to 111 months in prison for one count of robbery and one count of aggravated theft. The judge added a hate-crime enhancement to Patterson’s sentence as he admitted to using homophobic slurs against one of the victims and ordered him to pay $84,195 in restitution.