To Catch a Predator is an American reality television series in the television news magazine program Dateline NBC featuring confrontations with host Chris Hansen, partly filmed with a hidden camera, of adult men arriving at a sting house to have sex with a minor and typically being arrested as a result. The minors are adults impersonating underage persons (generally ages 13–15) in online chats. The series premiered in November 2004. It followed twelve undercover sting operations as they were conducted across the United States with the watchdog group Perverted-Justice. Following the third investigation, law enforcement and other officials became involved, leading to the arrests of most individuals caught. The series was criticized for its sordid tone, and the ethical and legal concerns raised over the nature of the sting operations it depicted, in particular potential violations of entrapment laws. The show was cancelled in 2008, following the suicide of Rockwall County, Texas, assistant district attorney Louis Conradt, as police attempted to serve him with a search warrant after he had been caught talking to and exchanging pictures with a Perverted-Justice volunteer posing as a 13-year-old boy. Conradt fatally shot himself as police and an NBC camera crew entered his home, an act that was captured by the filming crew. His estate sued Dateline for US$105 million, then settled out of court. Hansen stated that the show ended because it had simply run its course, though he later ran a Kickstarter campaign to relaunch the series, and he searched for new broadcast venues for it. In 2016, Hansen vs. Predator became a recurring segment on Crime Watch Daily, a syndicated television news magazine hosted by Hansen. Reruns of the Dateline segments are occasionally broadcast on MSNBC. NBC affiliates WTMJ in Milwaukee, KSHB in Kansas City, and WBRE in Wilkes-Barre have also produced local versions of To Catch a Predator. Various spin-offs have aired in the same format, including To Catch a Con Man, To Catch an ID Thief, To Catch a Car Thief, and To Catch an i-Jacker, which featured iPod thieves. To Catch a Predator is also aired on FX and Crime & Investigation in the United Kingdom, the Crime & Investigation Network in Australia, and New Zealand and Fox Crime in Portugal. History and format To Catch a Predator began as a series of segments the American NBC news magazine/reality show Dateline NBC, premiering under the title Dangerous Web