A 29-year-old San Mateo man was sentenced to four years in state prison Wednesday, March 22, for soliciting sexual videos and photos from hundreds of teenage boys worldwide while posing as a teenage girl on social media, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
Wai Kit Ching, also known as Raymond Ching, pleaded no contest to felony lewd acts with a child and to felony contacting a minor for the purpose of committing a molestation of the minor, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Ching solicited videos and photos of the victims masturbating while posing as a 15-year-old girl named “Alicia Harris” on Instagram, according to police. District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe noted that convincing an underage victim to touch themselves online is considered child molestation in California even if there’s no physical contact.
The father of one of the victims — a resident of Eden Prairie, Minnesota — discovered the communications on his son’s Instagram account and called the police in late May. An investigation led detectives to determine Harris’ Instagram account originated in San Mateo and was in fact operated by Ching, who is a Chinese national, police previously said.
In October of 2020, San Mateo detectives served a search warrant at Ching’s home on the 4300 block of Camden Avenue with the assistance of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations. Ching confessed to his crimes and was placed under arrest, police previously said.
During the investigation, detectives discovered Ching started his requests in 2018 and targeted white juvenile males between the ages of 12 and 15 with blond or light brown hair, according to police.
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