The Strange, Twisted Story of the Frat Troll at UCLA

ALMOST ALL THE VIDEOS START the same way. An unseen cameraman approaches attractive young college students, usually white men, typically members of fraternities, often on the streets of Westwood after dark.

In the videos, most subjects sneak uncomfortable glances at the silent cameraman and walk away. But sometimes, the cameraman hurls verbal abuse at them. 

“Oh my god look how privileged these MFs fucking are,” he shouts in one video.

“Why are you part of Sigma Chi fraternity? It’s a human trafficking cult,” he yells in another. 

“There goes the rape member! There goes the rape member!”

The man behind the camera is Joseph Freeman, a 27-year-old Westwood resident who has amassed more than 750,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram under usernames like @ihatesigmachi and @sigmachicritictemp. Over the last year, Freeman, whose videos sometimes bash police officers and Scientologists along with frat guys, has achieved micro-celebrity status among students at colleges around the country.

One student at Texas A&M, who goes by the name Zadeious Reign, said he could tell the people in Freeman’s videos were unhappy about being confronted. But, he said, “they are freaking 20-year-old white frat guys living in LA. They’re in their prime. No harm done.”

The social media posts, Reign said, are “like reparations.”

But unbeknownst to many of his followers, Freeman is not just an influencer with a confrontational M.O. According to an L.A. Material review of court filings and police records in four states, as well as interviews with more than two dozen people, Freeman has left a trail of disturbing phone calls and relentless online intimidation that has played out off screen for at least six years. More than two dozen people have accused Freeman of incessantly calling them and, in some cases, their family members, including one woman who said Freeman called her late at night to say, “You stupid bitch, I have your address and I know where you live,” according to court documents. Some people contacted by Freeman said they feared for their safety.

In Westwood, UCLA police say Freeman has been a constant and vexing presence over the last year. Although no students have reported him making specific threats of violence, police said that Freeman once visited a UCLA student’s parents’ home in Manhattan Beach after calling the student more than 100 times in two days.

But despite his lengthy record of court and police interactions, Freeman — who categorically denied wrongdoing in an interview with L.A. Material — has operated with relative impunity. UCLA police have arrested him twice on suspicion of stalking, officials said, but he has never been criminally charged in Los Angeles County, and no court case against him reviewed by L.A. Material has resulted in a conviction.

Freeman’s campaign against UCLA’s fraternities comes at a time when the university is already facing charges that it has failed to protect students, albeit in a different realm. Last year, the university was sued by students in a pro-Palestinian encampment who alleged that UCLA police stood by while counterprotesters brutally attacked them. More recently, in February, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit accusing UCLA of turning a “blind eye” to harassment of Jewish students and employees. 

But in the Freeman case, legal experts said that UCLA faces a vexing challenge. The anti-frat influencer operates in the legally blurry space between protected speech and criminal conduct. It is difficult, experts said, to prove that things like repeated calls and texts, public filming, and yelling insults constitute criminal stalking or cyberstalking, which require sustained, credible threats that are intended to place a reasonable person in fear of their safety.

And so, for the last year, Freeman has upended life in Westwood again and again, barraging students and sometimes even members of the UCLA Police Department with incessant texts and calls. No one, it seems, has been able to do anything about it. 

Students, many of whom asked not to be named for fear of inviting harassment, said they know of Freeman and avoid him. One woman, a senior studying political science, said she and her friends once relocated a birthday party after he posted an Instagram video filmed near their building.

In an interview, Freeman, who said he is half Black, characterized himself as a victim of harassment and discrimination by the “crooked” UCLA Police Department which he claimed “works in cahoots” with the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Freeman described his video project as “rage baiting,” and said he hopes to provoke reactions from his subjects for viral content that will grow his social media following. One of his aims, he said, is to spread the word about the evils of fraternities. 

When provided additional opportunity to comment on the details reported in this story, Freeman responded: “You are absolute fake news.”

He characterized himself as a content creator with integrity: He said he doesn’t film “certain kinds of people,” including homeless people and Black people.

But frat guys, he said, are fair game. 

“These are grown men that are making bad decisions,” he said.

It’s unclear how long Freeman has lived in Westwood, but his animosity toward the fraternity members who live there emerged as a major plotline on his social media in early 2025. 

It was several weeks after devastating wildfires had leveled Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, the wealthy neighborhood a short drive from UCLA.

On Westwood’s winding Gayley Avenue, a two-lane street that climbs the western edge of campus, the Sigma Chi fraternity hosted a concert at its two-story compound to raise money for victims of the Palisades fire.

Freeman, standing outside on the sidewalk, apparently wasn’t impressed.

“Screw you guys,” he said, according to a search warrant affidavit later filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by UCLA police. “You guys are, you know, raising money for the rich assholes in the Palisades.”

Fraternity members called the police, and also confronted Freeman, who soon left the party. But that was only the beginning of his crusade against the fraternity, according to the affidavit.

A member of Sigma Chi, then a 21-year-old junior, said he received more than 100 calls from Freeman over a two-day period following the party, according to the affidavit, which was filed by UCLA police as they sought a warrant to search Freeman's cell phones. Freeman also allegedly visited the student’s parents’ house in Manhattan Beach and sent the student photos of the home.

Freeman denied that he ever harassed the student. “UCLA PD is a very dirty agency,” he said. “They have targeted me continuously.”  

One fraternity member estimated that as many as 30 of his brothers have had run-ins with Freeman over the last year. Several members told L.A. Material that Freeman has repeatedly filmed them from the sidewalk, incessantly called them and their parents, and baselessly accused them of raping women. L.A. Material has not seen any evidence to support Freeman's claims about sexual assault.

“The closest thing to a personal interaction I’d had with him at any point before he found my mom’s phone number was following his Instagram,” said one Sigma Chi brother who said he did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

Many of the brothers at Sigma Chi expressed annoyance that Freeman has accused them of rape without evidence. 

UCLA’s fraternities, like those at many schools, have been accused of fostering environments that are not always safe for women. In a 2018 lawsuit, a female UCLA student alleged that the school’s fraternities routinely failed to protect against sexual assault. Sigma Chi, however, was not among the fraternities named in the suit. 

On a recent visit to UCLA’s Sigma Chi house, a dimly lit party den apparently ravaged by a hurricane of Miller Lite, it didn’t take long to get the brothers worked up about Freeman, whom they call the “I hate Sigma Chi” guy.

“He totally doesn’t know who’s in Sigma Chi or not,” one brother said, shirtless, as similarly disrobed men walked the dank second-floor living quarters. “He’ll just go up to random people and he’ll be like, ‘You’re in a Sigma Chi rape fraternity!’” (An L.A. Material review of Freeman’s social media never found that exact phrase, but did find numerous variations of it.)

One member who said his mother received repeated phone calls from Freeman speculated that the influencer trawled social media posts for names of the frat’s members and then researched their family history.

“It’s really difficult to make sense of from any point of view,” he said. “Like, why?”

In his videos, Freeman remains a cipher, staying behind the camera and not revealing his own face. Online, he generally does not disclose much about himself, including his legal name or other biographical details. When other students film their interactions with him, as they sometimes do, Freeman often appears standoffish. In his interview with L.A. Material, Freeman, who has described himself as autistic, chatted at length about his content and his perspective on the people and institutions that he’s encountered over the years. He at first appeared eager to discuss the workings of the legal system with a reporter familiar with court filings, but grew defensive when asked about allegations against him.

In recent years, Freeman has posted content filmed at the University of Miami, University of Washington, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and USC. Sometimes, his targets were not even in fraternities — but fit some aspects of the frat bro profile. In one instance, police said in court documents that a UCLA water polo player accused Freeman of “harassment and stalking” over the course of two months.

“You are 100% an evil person,” Freeman texted the student during a daily barrage of messages cited in a December affidavit UCLA police filed in Los Angeles Superior Court as part of a search warrant for Freeman’s internet data and email accounts. “You are evil, absolutely evil!!! You are a modern-day slave master."

Police said Freeman proceeded to badger the player’s mother, father, and two sisters, suggested that the athlete had HIV in an online post, and once shouted “I hope your mom gets raped” when driving by his Westwood apartment. 

Freeman denied that he harassed the water polo player.

Around the time that police served the warrant, one of Freeman’s Instagram pages with 20,000 followers disappeared from the platform, according to an L.A. Material review of his profiles. Freeman said the account was “banned” by Instagram. The platform did not respond to requests for comment and he has since started several new accounts.

Freeman does not appear to have meaningfully monetized his social media content, although he does have a TikTok shop where users can browse his recommended tripods and cameras and earn him a commission. 

Freeman’s recent targeting of frat guys helped him reach his peak of online notoriety. But his exploits in Westwood are far from the start of his run-ins with the police. In 2020, a resident of Vancouver, Washington, a small city on the banks of the Columbia River, filed a police report accusing Freeman of making “harassing phone calls” to her and four others who briefly attended high school with Freeman in the 2010s.

One former classmate told L.A. Material that Freeman hurled insults and sexual propositions at him via phone and text for years. “It was like ‘Fuck your mom, your grandma’s a piece of shit, I hope your child dies.’ It was just the most outlandish shit.” The classmate didn’t have copies of the texts anymore, so L.A. Material was unable to review them independently.

Freeman denied the accusations. “I’ve never had any problems with anybody in the state of Washington, so I think that might be a different person,” Freeman said when asked about the incident. “There are other people with the same exact name in Washington.”

The former classmate identified a photo of Freeman, and the date of birth listed on the police report matches the date of birth on Freeman’s LA and Florida police reports.

Kim Kapp, a spokesperson for the Vancouver Police Department, said the case had been suspended with no charges filed but did not respond when asked why.

The following year, Freeman appeared again in police records. But this time it was on the other side of the country. 

In September 2021, Freeman, then 22 years old, was fired from his job as an aircraft cleaner at Florida’s Sarasota Bradenton Airport, and began to ceaselessly call a woman who had worked with him at the airline, telling her “You stupid bitch, I have your address,” according to an arrest warrant filed in Sarasota County Court. 

The Sarasota State Attorney filed a misdemeanor cyberstalking charge against Freeman in October of 2021, but the case was dropped the following March because of a lack of evidence, according to the state attorney’s office.

Freeman called the case "frivolous," and suggested that he was arrested in retaliation for reporting “COVID concerns and a lot of different things.” He said he plans to sue the airline that employed him.

The episode did not end Freeman’s career in aviation.

In 2022, when Freeman worked for another airline, 15 passengers accused him of bombarding them and their families with expletives and sexual propositions via text and phone, in a federal lawsuit filed in Connecticut in 2024. In the suit, the passengers said they believed Freeman pulled their personal information from the airline’s database but didn’t know why he targeted them.

One plaintiff said in court documents that, when his brother died of a drug overdose, Freeman heard of it and proceeded to make “hateful and disparaging remarks” about the death. Another said Freeman learned that, during his childhood, his father was seriously injured during a house fire, and ominously said that “it would be unfortunate” if it happened again.

But the lawsuit was marred by a series of procedural missteps and missed filing deadlines by the plaintiffs, which ultimately led a judge to dismiss the case without ruling on the underlying allegations.

Freeman denied that he has ever harassed the passengers, and said that they sued him because they “just see dollar bills in their eyes.” He threatened to sue the plaintiffs for defamation and file a bar complaint against “the crackpot attorney that they hired.”

“A lot of this is just mutual animosity,” Freeman said.

To win a conviction in stalking and cyberstalking cases, prosecutors have to prove two key things: that the pattern of harassment would’ve made a reasonable person fear for their safety, and that it was intended to do just that, according to Blair Bernholz Berk, an attorney who represents high-profile Hollywood clients facing serial stalkers.

“Everything comes down to proof of intent,” Bernholz Berk said. “Proving that is not always so easy.”

Joe McNally, the former Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said prosecutors must often prioritize cyberstalkers who pose a physical threat: It’s a problem of “opportunity cost.” 

“That’s oftentimes dispiriting to victims,” McNally said. “If you are on the other side of this, a DA coming back and saying, ‘We get it but we’re not going to charge him,’ can be really disappointing because this type of conduct can have a real impact on somebody’s life.”

Nobody interviewed by L.A. Material, or referenced in court papers, has accused Freeman of threatening violence, let alone actually posing a physical threat. “We have not had anybody report him as being assaultive,” said Sgt. Fabiola Leon of the UCLA Police Department. “And in our two arrests with him he has also not been assaultive or combative.”

Several lawyers interviewed by L.A. Material said the best remedy for victims is often to seek a restraining order, which is relatively easy to obtain in court, according to Roxanne Rimonte, an attorney at C.A. Goldberg. Violating a restraining order can result in felony charges that can be more serious than stalking or cyberstalking charges, which often are filed as misdemeanors. 

UCLA spokesperson Richard Mejia said the school has referred people who have complained about Freeman to its student legal services offices for help seeking restraining orders. He said the school itself has not attempted to file a restraining order against Freeman because his behavior hasn’t involved “campus property, university operations, or direct threats against the institution itself.” Sigma Chi’s house borders UCLA’s campus but is not university property.

L.A. Material could not locate any restraining orders filed against Freeman in LA County. One UCLA student, who said Freeman called and filmed him for months on end, said he simply didn’t have the time to file court papers during a busy schedule that included class and school activities.

Freeman, on the other hand, has filed plenty of his own.

Since July, he has filed for 10 restraining orders in LA County (and, oddly, Washington state’s King County) against UCLA police officers and frat brothers, accusing police of violating his First Amendment rights, and students of “spying on me.” The petitions were dismissed because Freeman did not appear for court hearings.

In December, Freeman sued the University of California in federal court in Los Angeles over an incident where officers asked him to stop filming, accusing the university of violating his First Amendment rights. The case was dismissed because Freeman, who was representing himself, failed to state a legally sufficient claim, the judge ruled.

(In a different case, a federal judge accused Freeman of using AI to write his court filings, pointing to his citation of non-existent court cases and placeholder text reading “[Law Firm Name].”)

In an interview, officers at the UCLA Police Department, which is a separate agency from the much larger Los Angeles Police Department, said Freeman had also begun tormenting them. They said he had made “incessant” calls to department phone numbers and posted photos of officers and their families online. But, they said, there was little they could do. 

Sgt. Leon said UCLA police have presented a potential criminal case to the L.A. District Attorney. Zara Lockshin, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said prosecutors sent the case “back to law enforcement for further investigation” on Sept. 23, 2025.

When asked what she’d say to students frustrated that police have been unable to contain Freeman, Sgt. Leon and Lt. Isaac Koh suggested filing for civil restraining orders and paying for an online privacy service like DeleteMe, which costs $129 annually.

Some UCLA students said they felt frustrated with the school for not doing more to protect them. 

“If he was doing this to women, they probably would’ve stopped him already,” one student said.

It is unclear when Freeman came to Westwood or why. Sgt. Leon said there is no record that Freeman was ever a UCLA student, although he has claimed to be one many times, including to L.A. Material. In January of 2025, shortly before the Sigma Chi party to benefit Palisades fire victims that kicked off the beef, Freeman gave an interview to a Florida TV station in which he — under an alias he frequently uses on his social media accounts, “Keem James” — said he was a UCLA student affected by the blazes. 

A profile on a roommate finder website with Freeman’s photo describes him as a UCLA student graduating in 2026. His listed interests include partying, hiking, and photography. His planned activities? “Greek Life.”

Tomo Chien can be reached at [email protected].