A former YouTube star has been sentenced to ten years in prison in the US after pleading guilty to a charge of receiving indecent images of children.<\/p>\n
Austin Jones admitted encouraging six underage girls to send him sexually explicit videos in private messages, telling some they needed to “prove” that they were his biggest fans.<\/p>\n
Jones had built up a profile based around his covers of famous pop songs.<\/p>\n
The 26 year-old had 500,000 subscribers on YouTube and 225,000 on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Both accounts have now been deleted.<\/p>\n
YouTube blocked Jones’ channel from carrying advertising following his arrest in 2017 but was criticised for being slow to remove it completely.<\/p>\n
Jones, from Illinois, had also admitted to using Facebook on around 30 other occasions to entice underage girls to send him explicit photos and videos.<\/p>\n
He told some of his victims that the videos were part of a modelling opportunity and others that he would help them to boost their Instagram accounts.<\/p>\n
“Production and receipt of child pornography are extraordinarily serious offences that threaten the safety of our children and communities,” said Assistant US Attorney Katherine Neff Welsh\u00a0in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Jones’s actions took something from his victims and their families that they will never be able to get back.”<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"