Ryan Kelly describes his job to strangers as “doing giggles on the Internet.” The real shape of it is harder to summarize. Over seven years, the Missouri-based comedian and scam hunter has built a media operation spanning platform ad revenue, brand partnerships, live campus performances, corporate cybersecurity keynotes, and a community app in alpha testing, all managed by an editor, a research assistant, an agent, and a wife who functions, by his own account, as the company’s operational spine.

Ryan holds a BA with a double major in Business and International Relations from Calvin University, and an MBA in Homeland Security from Wilmington University, credentials that frame a career that resists tidy categorization. He posts 10 to 12 videos a week on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat, mixing company-history sketch comedy with infotainment and cybersecurity education. His following spans over 10 million across platforms.

The two halves of his output serve different functions, and the relationship between them is what holds the business together. Comedy content keeps the algorithm producing ad revenue; cybersecurity content builds the credibility that draws security-aligned brand partnerships and, separately, the fraud victims who submit cases to him for investigation at no charge. 

“I always say comedy feels like I’m helping people forget about their problems,” he says, “but the cyber side, I know, is helping people fix their problems.”

When a Creator Becomes an Operator

Ryan identifies the transition from solo creator to small-business operator as the moment he made his first hire. He now employs an editor for long-form content, a friend of his wife’s who handles the production work Ryan acknowledges he is poorly equipped to do himself, and a research assistant who manages the volume of sourcing behind his deep-dive videos. He still edits all of his short-form content personally, over his wife’s standing objection, a stubbornness he traces to the technical friction of extracting footage from in-app recording.

His wife oversees organizational direction and logistics. “She gamified a system for me, and it works fantastically,” Ryan says. She also screens his incoming comments before he engages with the audience. “She’s just got thicker skin when it comes to this stuff,” he says.

Beyond digital output, Ryan tours college campuses for live comedy and delivers cybersecurity presentations at companies, income streams he describes as structurally necessary. Getting the business to function, he says, required understanding “how diversified it is that you kind of need to be to even make money.”

Trust as the Filter for Brand Deals

Platform ad revenue is concentrated on Facebook and YouTube, which Ryan describes as the most consistent and highest-paying sources. TikTok’s monetization, he notes, remains more volatile. “TikTok, it feels like you get stuck at specific numbers and then you finally go again,” he says.

On brand partnerships, Ryan turns down a major share of incoming offers. His stated standard is practical: promoting a brand that damages his credibility undermines both the security-aligned deals he attracts and the trust that makes fraud victims contact him with cases. “The most valuable thing that we have is trust,” he says. “I know I stress my agent out quite a bit. He’s, like, ‘Please say yes to something.’”

His longest-running partner is DeleteMe, a data removal service that aligns directly with his cybersecurity content. He recently added ZocDoc after initially passing. He also runs limited-time merch drops, priced for community rather than margin and fulfilled by hand with his wife and parents; one recent drop produced 700 to 800 orders over a weekend. His view on the commercial hierarchy is consistent: “If a company is willing to pay me, that’s so much nicer that I can keep giving free content to as many people as I possibly can.”

In recent tracking, his sponsored content has also outperformed his organic videos in viewership. “Sometimes, my brand deals are even more successful viewership-wise than my normal videos at an average,” he says.

Six Thousand Submissions and a Case That Won’t Close

Ryan’s cybersecurity work is entirely pro bono. He charges nothing, reasoning that victims have already lost money and he cannot reliably promise recovery. He estimates receiving 6,000 to 7,000 submissions since making the practice public. Sextortion cases alone generate four to eight new submissions per day. For most of them, his options are limited to guidance and referrals to official channels. “There’s only so much I can do before any of these big companies get involved,” he says.

The case that has occupied him longest involves a Florida-based operation he has investigated for three to four years. He says he holds the names of the scam center’s owners, their location, insurance numbers, and victim identification data spanning 14 states. His estimate puts total losses at between $100 million and $250 million. He has brought the evidence to 17 or 18 agencies, law enforcement bodies, and elected officials. Nothing has moved.

“I don’t know what more you could ask for,” Ryan says. “I just don’t know what else to give you.”

One of the suspected organizers continues posting photos of supercars to Instagram. “It just breaks your heart,” Ryan says. He describes the emotional weight of the pro bono work as a real constraint on how much he can take on. “Please fill out an FBI IC3 form,” he says. “There’s only so much I have in me before I just get real sad.”

Gen Z Gets Scammed More Than Boomers

The common assumption that older users are the primary fraud targets does not hold in Ryan’s experience. He cites a Vice report placing Gen Z and Millennials’ scam rates above boomers, which he attributes to their greater time online. The most common case type in his intake is sextortion. 

He has traced geographic patterns across the fraud types he processes: pig-butchering scams, which combine manufactured romantic relationships with investment fraud, originate heavily from Southeast Asia. Sextortion comes primarily from Nigeria. The theft and manipulation of Facebook pages and YouTube accounts he traces to organized groups in Pakistan that have operated consistently for three to four years. “It’s on such a level that it’s for sure organized,” he says.

His standing advice to sextortion targets is to refuse payment, block immediately across all platforms, and report every account. He argues that the scammers’ practical ability to distribute compromising content is more limited than victims believe, and that refusing to pay eliminates their leverage. “They will give up,” he says.

The Arithmetic of Making People Smile

The cybersecurity app Ryan planned to build for public use remains on hold. He can design a desktop version, but most of his audience is on mobile, and the processing requirements have not been resolved into a workable design.

In its place, he is building a community and discovery app drawn around a problem he describes with a reference to a book called “Bowling Alone,” a study he summarizes as documenting how access to informal social space has eroded. The app is still in alpha. It is designed to centralize his content, accept audience submissions, offer polls and merch discounts, and surface recommendations for other creators he considers underappreciated. The cat photo section is already built. It was the most requested feature.

The creator-recommendation element reflects a position he traces to observing the comedy world. “No one’s story is going to be my story,” Ryan says. “At the end of the day, just do your own thing.”

“I just hope that I’m still making people smile,” he says. “Whether that’s monetized or not.”

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