SICK

Ohio Man Who Falsely Claimed to Be Missing Boy After ‘20/20’ Episode Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

Brian Rini, then 24, sparked nationwide attention after falsely claimed to be Timmothy Pitzen, a child who went missing nearly a decade ago.

An Ohio man who sparked nationwide attention when he claimed to be a long-missing child was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison to aggravated identity theft. On April 3, Brian Rini, 24, approached a woman on a Kentucky street and claimed to be Timmothy Pitzen—an Illinois child who went missing at age 6 in 2011—and had escaped from his two male captors from a hotel room. Rini, who knew the missing boy’s full name and date of birth, said “he had been sexually and physically abused for years while in captivity,” according to court documents. But following a multi-state police investigation, authorities learned Rini was not the missing teenage boy and charged him with identity theft and making false statements to a federal agent. Rini, who also had falsely claimed to be a child sex-trafficking victim in two separate incidents, told authorities he had learned about Pitzen from an ABC 20/20 episode about the case. Prosecutors later dropped the second charge after Rini agreed to plead guilty to identity theft.