YouTuber Faces RICO Charges for “Prank”

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]This YouTube is now facing multiple federal charges, a potential 7-year prison sentence, a civil lawsuit of $3 million, all after pepper spraying an innocent bystander who ended up in the ER with nearly 80% vision loss. What is going on here? I feel like it's every day at this point where I look on the internet, I'm going, "Oh, wow. Look at that. Another day, another influencer doing something so incredibly stupid. I want to pull my hair out." But speaking about stupidity, I guess the defense of this influencer is that it was self-defense. Excuse me, what? Pepper spraying a random shopper for just doing his shopping and putting stuff in the grocery cart is self-defense now. So, meet Richard Maza, a 51-year-old YouTuber from Northridge in Southern California. And he's built a channel called Freedom of the Press. And the whole idea, I guess, is just built around what's known as First Amendment Auditors. And to put it lightly, that whole genre is an interesting group of people. Some people, I guess, do it correctly, but there's a whole bunch of them that are just annoying scumbags.

[00:00:59]But essentially, the basis of it is people go out and test their rights and make sure they still have their rights.

[00:01:06]Hence why it's auditing. And I mean, as a concept, it does have a real legal basis because for the most part, filming in public in the US is protected. And you have a whole tradition of people using that right to document government employees, law enforcements, public officials, essentially holding institutions accountable for what they're doing. For example, if a cop is violating someone's rights, it's very important to have that on camera. But what Maza does, however, is a little bit different to put it lightly. So, instead of, you know, going and trying to audit, I don't know, government workers or so on, he and his group, they post up in like a parking lot or something like that and basically just film regular people who are going about their day, who have done nothing and who are not public figures and probably just don't want to be filmed. It seems like his goal is to just, you know, slightly harass and then film the moment when they finally react to him and that's content for him, I guess.

[00:01:55]>> What are you doing?

[00:01:56]>> What are you doing? What are you doing?

[00:01:58]>> What? What's going on here?

[00:01:58]>> I don't know. What's going on here?

[00:02:00]>> I'm waiting for a table at this restaurant.

[00:02:02]>> Awesome. None of your business.

[00:02:03]>> We're walking. Oh my goodness. Why are you wasting resources? So, somebody tells you it's none of your business, you call the cops. None of your business. All right, I'm calling the cops. They'll get an answer out of you.

[00:02:13]>> You are not going to break this.

[00:02:14]Guarantee you're not going to break. I would love for you to try.

[00:02:19]Why don't you go mind your own business?

[00:02:21]Go pick up your milk and cookies. You want to get in my face?

[00:02:24]>> Yeah. Give it.

[00:02:30]>> And if you do remember, we actually have talked about one of these like government auditors before who this guy just ended up prank calling the government over and over and over again and finally had a bunch of people show up to his house.

[00:02:40]>> Just so you know, I am willing to drive down there. come in there and beat y'all. Yo, do you understand that? Do you understand that that you aren't safe?

[00:02:49]>> I need to be out there children in your name. I need to be children alive to force an investigation.

[00:02:55]>> That was ages ago. But however, the group that was with Maza that day everything happened was a Canadian YouTuber who posts as the guy True North transparency along with a fatherson duo Conrad and Nick Rankin who run the channel Impact Media. And apparently the four of them have been traveling through the Bay Area together in the days before this incident. So on March 28th, 2026, Mountain View police started getting calls about a group causing problems outside of a Costco in North Rangorf Avenue. At least four separate complaints happened before the more serious ones happened. So that shows that a lot of people were concerned about what they were doing. And I guess even though the officers were aware of the situation, they hadn't moved in to shut anything down. And apparently there's a legal reason for that because California courts have previously set a protected speech activity that can take place in a shopping center even when those spaces are technically private property. So in a way the police department's dealing with some regulatory gray area. But I guess the more serious interaction started when a guy was walking to his car. This man is Paul Rabino. He's a maintenance worker and he was loading his bags into his trunk and noticed the group had cameras on him. He asked them what they were filming for and the group's response, according to the police report, was to start mocking him. And the dude, who was clearly frustrated, I guess, flinched towards them at some point. And the whole group painted that as an attack.

[00:04:08]So the dude then got in his car, probably done with the whole situation, just wanting to leave. And Maza followed him, shoved a camera through an open window into the guy's face, and used his pepper spray right in the victim's eyes.

[00:04:20]And the fact that Maza is using self-defense as an excuse here does not make sense whatsoever. Because if you were threatened by this guy, why are you following him into his car? What? This is also happening in California where I'm pretty sure you have to retreat before you can actually do anything. So, uh I wonder how this is going to go for him. And Paul initially told officers that he was fine and didn't really need medical attention. However, the next day he noticed he was losing his vision. And he later described his vision as looking through frosted glass, like someone, I guess, had pressed crumpled plastic wrap over his eyes. and a doctor later confirmed an eye injury. And his attorneys later said that the man experienced 80% vision loss for the first 10 days and then about 40% vision loss at the time they draft the lawsuit.

[00:05:03]And to make things even worse, there's a possibility here that this damage could be permanent. What makes this even more weird is when Maza was brought into custody, he didn't have one canister of pepper spray on him. No, he had three.

[00:05:14]So clearly he needs to keep a lot of pepper spray on him because he's planning on using it a lot. who carries around three canisters of pepper spray on them for self-defense. I mean, everything is just so bizarre here. But his car was impounded and investigators actually submitted a request for a search warrant to look for anything that might suggest the confrontation was planned in advance. So now the write up from the officer handling the case is worth paying attention to because it's doing something slightly unusual. It's not just like documenting what happened that afternoon, but also making an argument about the pattern of behavior that led to this. His officer actually reviewed a large portion of Maza's YouTube content. And here he found a pretty consistent trend of this guy just pushing boundaries over and over and over again until he has to defend himself. Cuz it seems like on his channel when he escalates things to a pepper spray incident where he has to defend himself, the videos do pretty well. So, who knows? There could be a motive here on why he wanted to pepper- spray the guy. What do we know, though?

[00:06:10]But not only that, the officer also noted the way he conducted himself and talked about those incidents. He didn't really talk about those incidents as they were uh self-defense incidents.

[00:06:19]>> Keep your camera off me. You keep your camera off.

[00:06:23]>> I don't care what you keep your camera off me.

[00:06:27]>> You just messed up my camera.

[00:06:28]>> Hey man, that pepper spray don't even work. That's the bad part about it.

[00:06:31]>> It doesn't?

[00:06:32]>> No. Well, that's a scene. I spent a lot of money on it.

[00:06:34]>> Because at least according to the officer, people who normally have to defend themselves with actual self-defense, they don't turn around and taunt the people they're about to have to defend themselves from. But here, apparently in every case, Maza did. So the core conclusion of this report is the guy and his group were not simply filming public spaces. They were also following a playbook of positioning themselves in hightra locations, essentially trying to bait some sort of interaction. So they're claiming the Costco incident wasn't really a thing that just happened to Richard Maza here.

[00:07:03]They're claiming he set all this up. And because of that, he's currently charged with two felonies: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and felony use of tear gas. and combined if he's convicted for both counts. Those charges may carry a max sentence of 7 years in California state prison. Currently, he was reigned on April 2nd, 2026, and he was released without having to post a bail. But as a condition of his release, he's required to stay at least 50 yards away from the Costco where the incident happened. So now, the next hearing is set for May 19th in Santa Cl County. But that's not it because things get worse for the guy because separate from the criminal case, Rabbina's attorney, Andrew Waters, has also filed a civil suit against all four members of the group. seeking $3 million in damages. And that number breaks down at least to $1 million for the injury itself, which, you know, costs a whole lot of pain and suffering and the potential, you know, permanent visual damages from this. Like, this shouldn't have happened. If they weren't trying to bait an interaction from people, this would have never happened. Then they tripled it under the RICO act, which is the same act used to go after organized crime. So, beyond the money, the lawsuit is also asking for the court to force the group to shut down their YouTube channels and any other social media and refer to the case the FBI for criminal charges. But here's where it gets worse.

[00:08:15]Because the very next day on March 29th, while Maza was still in custody, Tro Yan Conrad and Nick Rankin were spotted in downtown Menllo Park where Tro Yan, the Canadian member of Maza's group, was allegedly filmed pepper spraying another man in front of an Ace Hardware store.

[00:08:32]So this group is just going around baiting interactions and pepper- spraying people. They are quite literally burdens to society. They are bottom feeders. Imagine spending your day going around harassing strangers until they finally do something and you immediately pepper spray them. Come on.

[00:08:47]But what's crazy about this is the lawyer was apparently out shopping that day, witnessed all this happen firsthand, and recorded his own video of the confrontation. So, Andrew Waters has since filed a personal lawsuit in addition to the other lawsuit, and he's appealing the denial of the initial request for a restraining order against the group while the case works its way through the courts. So, I mean, this is just insane. The argument they're making in both cases is essentially this, like what these guys are doing isn't a series of bad decisions. No, this is an organized operation. They're doing this over and over again for profit. And according to the complaints, the group travels around from city to city, does this kind of stuff over and over again, and monetizes it on YouTube. And then of course to make things worse, they move to a different city before local law enforcement can build a case. Now the legal foundation of all this is interesting because filming in public in most cases is legal. That part isn't really in dispute and Maza's channel is at least normally built on that right.

[00:09:40]But what ended up happening at Costco goes way beyond those rights to film because this is just harassment and attacking people. At least from what I see. But hey, that's just my opinion and it's going to be really hard to defend this guy. But regardless, his criminal case is going to court May 19th. So, I guess we'll see what happens then. But other than that, YouTube thinks you'll enjoy this video. And if you're new here, feel free to subscribe. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.