Anurag Tiwari

Tiwari was originally charged with two felony counts, including attempted lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14. Ultimately, one felony was dropped, and later on December 21, 2007, the Sonoma County District Attorney dropped the second felony charge and charged Tiwari with a single misdemeanor offense. He was then acquitted of the misdemeanor in August 2009. The District Attorney then charged him with a different misdemeanor offense. He was convicted of the misdemeanor and sentenced to 2 years of conditional probation, 200 hours of volunteer service, various fines of different amounts, and restricted from contacting minors. Tiwari appealed the misdemeanor, and the charge was reduced to a criminal infraction in a plea deal reached in July 2010. He pled no contest to the infraction and had to pay a $30 court security fee.

In 2011, Tiwari filed a lawsuit and defamation claim against NBC, claiming they violated his Fourth Amendment rights, defamed him, and caused him emotional distress. He stated NBC had directed police to arrest him in a dramatic manner for the benefit of the cameras, with the intention of humiliating him. NBC stated by declaring that the First Amendment protected it from his allegations and filed a protective order against Tiwari. U.S. District Court Judge Edward M. Chen denied the news station's claim that the production and broadcast of the show are inextricably linked. He found that "a reasonable jury could find that it wasn't necessary for police to arrest Tiwari in a sensational way, or film him being restrained in handcuffs during his detention and interview with police." The judge further said that it was possible Tiwari suffered emotional distress when he discovered the filming and recording of events, and that NBC will have to defend its behavior beyond the broadcast depiction of the events in question.

NBC countered that To Catch a Predator was a privileged media report that was "substantially true," which the judge accepted even though Tiwari was never convicted of a felony. The objection that NBC's broadcast was protected by the First Amendment, however, allowed them to avoid Tiwari's claim that he was defamed by the show's suggestion that he was involved in committing a felony. The judge granted NBC's request to dismiss Tiwari's defamation claim based on the show's epilogue. Given what they had seen in the broadcast, he determined that "the epilogue taken in context is substantially true" and would do little to change the public's perception of Tiwari's actions. It is not known what happened afterwards, but it is assumed the lawsuit was likely settled out of court.