Hollywood Just Arrested a Producer Who Used Fake Casting Calls to Rape Children for 25 Years

Corey Feldman warned America about Hollywood pedophiles for decades and everyone called him crazy.

Now a California filmmaker with a résumé good enough to put him on screen alongside Richard Dreyfuss just got hit with 24 felony child sex charges after investigators say he used those same credits to hunt children for a quarter century.

What detectives found on his hard drive – and what he admitted on camera in 2018 – is worse than anything you're imagining right now.

25 Years of Casting Calls That Were Really Hunting Trips

Shane Ryan Gledhill, 46, of Lompoc, California, built a legitimate-looking Hollywood career that gave him cover to do something monstrous.

He appeared in roughly 120 films and produced more than 150 projects featuring recognizable names – the kind of credits that make a teenage aspiring actress think the email in her inbox is the real thing.

He used the professional names "Shane Ryan" and "Shane Ryan-Reid" to contact his targets through online casting calls and filmmaking projects.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff's detectives arrested Gledhill on August 3rd after a nearly five-year investigation that began when a 17-year-old came forward to report conduct that allegedly happened when she was 15.

By the time detectives finished, they had identified nine survivors – all minors when the alleged offenses occurred – and seized thousands of digital files from his home.

The charges tell the full story: rape by force, child molestation, sodomy of a minor, forcible sexual penetration, possession of child pornography, and providing harmful matter to a minor – 24 felony counts in total.

He pleaded not guilty.

This Is Exactly What Corey Feldman Was Talking About

Feldman spent years warning anyone who would listen that Hollywood was protecting a network of child predators hiding behind professional credentials.

He said in 2011 that pedophilia was the number one problem in Hollywood and that he'd been surrounded by predators since he was 14 years old.

Hollywood mocked him.

The mainstream media largely dismissed him.

The same industry that protected Harvey Weinstein for 30 years, that looked away while Bryan Singer was accused of child abuse in Amy Berg's documentary An Open Secret, that created the term "casting couch" as a cute euphemism for sexual assault – that industry told everyone Feldman was exaggerating.

Gledhill's case is proof the pattern never stopped.

One of his films – released in 2006 – followed a serial killer who kidnaps an underage girl, manipulates her into sex, and then kills her.

Gledhill played the rapist killer himself.

He later made a second and third version.

In a 2018 on-camera interview, Gledhill said the second version "showed real penetration" on screen.

That film circulated freely for years while a teenage survivor mustered the courage to finally walk into a sheriff's office.

The Online Casting Call Is the New Predator Toolkit

The FBI issued a warning in February 2026 about violent online networks specifically targeting children – and investigators say these predators find their victims wherever children spend time online.

Casting calls are no different.

Since COVID pushed auditions onto laptops and phones, the distance between a fake casting notice and a 15-year-old girl sending photos to an adult predator has collapsed to almost nothing.

Gledhill maintained multiple Instagram accounts – @madsincinema, @talkhardcinema, @shaneryanreid – that together looked like an active, legitimate film operation.

That's the predator toolkit in 2026: a real-looking filmography, a few social media handles, and a direct line to ambitious teenagers whose parents have no idea who's on the other end.

Investigators believe his alleged conduct stretched from California's Central Coast into Los Angeles County and potentially as far as the East Coast – and they've released his booking photograph specifically because victims who knew him as "Shane Ryan" may not connect that name to the man now sitting in jail on $500,000 bail.

Law enforcement caught him.

Hollywood never flagged a thing.

This is the same Hollywood that lectures you about protecting women and children every awards season, that floods Democrat campaigns with cash, that called Corey Feldman a troubled liar for two decades while its members kept quiet about what they knew.

The predators hid behind prestige and the cultural authority that comes with being on the right side of every progressive cause.

Parents, talk to your kids about who is really behind those casting calls.

Sources:

• Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, "Sheriff's Detectives Arrest Lompoc Man on 15 Felony Charges Related to the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children," Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, August 4, 2026.
• Daniel Farr, "Vile Hollywood Actor Accused of Luring Teen Victims With Casting Calls Charged With 24 Counts of Child Sex Abuse," New York Post, August 14, 2026.
• "Lompoc Actor and Filmmaker Charged with 24 Counts of Child Sex Crimes," The Santa Barbara Independent, August 14, 2026.
• FBI Boston, "FBI Boston Warns of Nihilistic Violent Extremists Targeting Children and Vulnerable Victims Online," Federal Bureau of Investigation, February 19, 2026.
• Josh Friedman, "Deputies Arrest Man Who Used Casting Calls to Sexually Abuse Children," CalCoastNews, August 2026.