When restaurant manager Dwight Lomax is caught molesting a female employee, he claims that he was following orders from a Detective Milgram over the phone. As detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler delve into the case, they discover Detective Milgram was a hoax by engineer, Merritt Rook. Rook later turns his trial into a media circus by using the courtroom as a soapbox. Rook's courtroom antics set him free, and with a group of followers, detective Benson and Stabler fall prey to another one of Rook's psychological schemes leaving the SVU department vulnerable.