They Pose as 13-Year-Olds Online. One of Their Tips Just Sent a College Professor to Federal Court.

On Discord, she went by "Chloe." She told the man messaging her she was 13. According to federal prosecutors, that didn't stop the conversation — it became sexually explicit, then it became a plan: a motel room near a park in Valley Stream, New York, booked for the morning of January 7, 2026.

"Chloe" was an FBI agent by the time that meeting was set up. But she wasn't the one who found him.

The initial contact traces back to October 2025, and to a nonprofit called The Decoy Project. Founded in 2025 by Jordan Spohn, a 33-year-old advertising professional in Florida, the group says it now has about eight volunteers who pose as minors in the online spaces where predators look for them — then stop, document, and report, rather than confront.

That's the part of this world most people know from YouTube: a decoy, a hidden camera, a confrontation filmed for views. The Decoy Project says explicitly that it does not do that. According to the organization, its volunteers do not initiate sexual conversation, do not confront the people they identify, and do not publish anyone's name or face. Instead, they preserve the conversation as evidence under standard chain-of-custody practice and file a formal report — to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, to the FBI, and to Internet Crimes Against Children task forces.

Once The Decoy Project's tip reached the FBI, an actual federal agent took over the conversation, posing as "Chloe" going forward. Prosecutors say the man kept talking — including, they allege, masturbating on a video call and sending an explicit photo — for months, until he arranged the January meeting and rented the motel room. When he arrived at Edward W. Cahill Memorial Park in Valley Stream, FBI agents were waiting instead of a 13-year-old.

The man was identified in court filings as Philip Schuler, 53, an adjunct history professor at Suffolk County Community College. He was arraigned in federal court in Central Islip on a seven-count indictment: attempted coercion and enticement of a minor, plus child pornography charges. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison, up to life. The college placed him on immediate administrative leave, saying in a statement that he would not perform "any instructional or other duties pending investigation."

The Decoy Project publishes its own activity totals on its website: more than 2,300 volunteer hours, over 900 suspected predators engaged in conversation, 72 case referrals sent to law enforcement, and 38 active investigations it says are ongoing as a result. Those are the organization's self-reported figures, not an independently audited count — but the Schuler case is a real, court-confirmed example of what one of those 72 referrals can turn into.

This week, an account affiliated with The Decoy Project posted on Instagram about a newer case: a man it said traveled from Michigan to Texas to meet a decoy posing as a 14-year-old, described as the group's "4th sting operation" with local law enforcement, with a claim of 18 confirmed arrests in the organization's first year. IF Daily looked for independent confirmation of that specific arrest — a police or sheriff's statement, court records, local news coverage — and found none as of publication. The post itself states that everyone involved is innocent until proven guilty. We're not naming the man or reporting the claim as fact until it's independently confirmed, and we could not locate a verifiable video of the incident to include here.

That gap is worth sitting with. The same organization behind an arrest a federal grand jury has already indicted is also the source of a much newer claim nobody outside its own account has confirmed yet. Both things can be true of the same group at the same time — a real track record, and a claim that simply hasn't caught up to independent verification yet.

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