According to the Duke University school newspaper,a Chinese PhD student at Duke University has been arrested and charged with 15 counts of serious crimes related to child pornography. The 29-year-old Yi Yao, a postdoctoral researcher in biomedical engineering, is facing up to 110 years in prison and a bail of $8 million.
Yao was charged with 15 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor for allegedly copying pornographic content involving children aged 6 to 13. If convicted, Yao faces a maximum sentence of 88 months in prison for each count.
Media reports suggest that Yao is currently prohibited from entering Duke University.
According to court documents, between August 2022 and February 2023, Yi Yao used BitTorrent software to download and distribute child pornography.
Yi Yao has also confessed to these charges.
Duke campus police arrested Yi Yao pursuant to a search warrant, and the US Department of Homeland Security also participated in the case as Yi Yao is a Chinese citizen.
Yao Yi was set at $8 million bail. If released on bail, he will be ordered to submit to electronically monitored house arrest, hand in his passport and not contact anyone under the age of 18.
Another recent case in which Chinese students were arrested for downloading and distributing child pornography was the case of Liu Zetian in 2021.
Liu, 25, was arrested by the FBI and police for downloading and distributing child pornography.
His information was released by the United States Attorney’s Office in St. Louis, Missouri on June 30: In March 2021, the former Washington University graduate student, 25-year-old Liu, was indicted by the prosecution for possessing child pornography documents, Liu had pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 5 years in prison on the same day.
Liu said that he initially downloaded such content unintentionally, then began to download it intentionally, and Liu also voluntarily admitted that the videos were on his computer and flash drive.
Liu completed his undergraduate education in China in 2019 and went to the United States in July of the same year, but he was arrested just two months later.
In May 2017, Du Furen, a Chinese student at a preparatory high school in Maryland, was arrested.
Police found that Du had downloaded child pornography videos from children as young as 6 or 8 years old.
In October of the same year, Du Furen was sentenced to 10 years in prison to serve one year, with the remainder of his sentence suspended.
When he was arrested and imprisoned, Du Furen was only 18 years old, and it can be said that life had just begun, but he was jailed because of bad behavior.
Many people applauded Yao’s decision at Duke University, with netizens saying:
There are also netizens who are not worth Yao Yi:
Some netizens said:
