A man accused of grooming young children online and failing to register as a sex offender has now been found unfit for trial in Scott County.
25-year-old Brandon Everhart of Naples was previously charged by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office with two counts of grooming, both Class 4 felonies, and one count of failure to register as a sex offender, a Class 3 felony.
Court records from Scott County indicated a Finding of Unfitness and Order for Treatment was officially filed in Scott County Circuit Court on Monday. The order was distributed to the public defender’s office, the Greene County Jail, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department, and the Illinois Department of Human Services.
A jury trial in the case had been scheduled to begin April 27th. That trial date is now expected to be vacated, and will be formally announced at Everhart’s next upcoming hearing in Scott County Circuit Court on March 30th.
The charges stem from a September 2025 search of Everhart’s residence in the 400 block of Clinton Street in Naples. Investigators with the Attorney General’s High Tech Crimes Bureau, working alongside the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, executed a search warrant and took Everhart into custody. They allegedly discovered evidence that he had been grooming young children in online chatrooms for sexual conversations or sexual conduct. Everhart has been lodged at the Greene County Jail in Carrollton since his arrest.
Everhart was facing a potential minimum of 3-5 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on the charges if he had been found guilty.