ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – 26-year-old Ernest Darnell Johnson is accused of using a woman’s profile on a dating app to allegedly lure people to have them robbed in St. Louis County.
The accusation follows a series of second chances the defendant has received in the St. Louis courts.
Court records show Johnson was convicted in a 2019 robbery and kidnapping following a Metrolink incident, in which Johnson eventually pleaded guilty to restraining someone and taking his cell phone.
A St. Louis judge sentenced Johnson to seven years in prison in 2019 but suspended that sentence in exchange for three years probation.
The online court record shows 11 probation violations from April 2020 until April 2021. The violations don’t give a reason and can often alert for a simple dead battery, but it was enough to hold a special hearing in which a St. Louis Judge, Clinton Wright, released the defendant to remain on probation as originally ordered.
FOX 2 asked the courts and the judge for a comment and has not received a response. Johnson was then discharged from probation in November 2022—four years before the end of his originally imposed prison sentence.
The St. Louis County Police Department says the latest charges involve two incidents from this past June. Detectives say they linked defendant Johnson’s computer to the cases in which one man was robbed and a second man was reportedly shot driving away from an attempted robbery.
Johnson had his first court appearance Monday through a video feed, where he’s now confined in the St. Louis County Justice Center on a $500,000 cash-only bond.
A dating app crime plot is not new, as FOX Files has reported previously on the issue.
Two men, including 20-year-old James Furlow, are now serving prison time for using love to lure crime victims. That case was cracked with the cooperation of police departments in St. Ann and Overland. Those crimes happened in a baseball field parking lot in the middle of the day.
A reminder: the person you’re talking to online may not be who they say they are.
