On Tuesday, a federal grand jury charged Chinese citizen Tong Sun with transporting child pornography, faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if found guilty, according to information released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
It is worth noting that Sun Tong, from Jiangsu Province, has no legal status in the United States, he came to the United States as an illegal entry just last month, and the child pornography information was also discovered by border inspectors when they checked Sun Tong's mobile phone on May 8.
Now that he has just entered the United States and is facing such a felony charge, I don't know if his "hard work" road to the United States is worth it.
According to court charges, Sun's mobile phone contained a long video of a child being sexually abused by an adult man, which depicted a girl under the age of 5, and the entire video was 3 minutes and 05 seconds long. There is also a video of a girl under the age of 13, which is 1 minute and 19 seconds long.
The case was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Investigation (HSI) and the U.S. Border Patrol Division of Rio Valley, Texas, with Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Peter I. Brostowin, leading the prosecution and Sun Tong currently in custody awaiting trial.
According to local media reports, Sun Tong said that he had used the mobile phone for 7 or 8 years, knew that his mobile phone had child pornography videos, and originally planned to delete the videos before entering the United States, but later forgot to delete them.
In fact, just before Sun Tong's arrest, a similar case had just occurred in the United States that shocked the Chinese community.
Yi Yao, a 29-year-old Chinese postdoctoral scholar at Duke University, has been charged with multiple crimes of sexual exploitation of minors.
According to court documents, Yao was charged with 15 felonies of second-degree sexual exploitation of minors. If convicted, Yao carries a maximum sentence of 88 months in prison on each charge and could face up to 110 years in prison, and Yao is currently banned from entering Duke University.
It is reported that from August 2022 to February 2023, Yao used BitTorrent software many times to download and upload a number of pornographic materials about children aged 6 to 13.
Yao confessed to the allegations.
Because Yao was a foreign national, the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Duke University Police Department and the Carey Police Department, together executed a federal search warrant for Yao's home.
Yao made his first appearance in the Wake County Superior Court on bail of $8 million and was ordered to put under electronic house arrest, surrender his passport and ban on using electronic devices or contacting people under the age of 18 if he was on bail.
The classmate used BT to download different types of child pornography productions several times, apparently intentionally, and he confessed to it, but the bail of 8 million was still very surprising.
- In February 2013, Florida State University student Zhaozhao Shen was also arrested for collecting child pornography. Police found that Shen had downloaded 14 child pornographic videos and images, and based on Shen's IP address, they found his residence, arrested him, and checked his computer. Shen was charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. Police said Shen downloaded images mostly of men and boys, and police described his behavior as "downloading, watching, deleting, downloading again," suspecting that he had downloaded more pornography. Shen lived in the same house as other Chinese students, but agents found that it was Shen's computer that contained child pornography.
- After Shen's arrest, his father, when he asked the Chinese Student Association at Florida State University, said that Shen would break the law only because he did not understand American law.
- In December 2015, police arrested Jiemin Li, a 25-year-old Chinese student in Jersey City, New Jersey, also because of child pornography on his computer. On December 19 of that year, Li went to a Microsoft store in Willowbrook Mall in Wayne and asked the store to repair a Microsoft laptop for him and transfer the documents inside, which he retrieved two days later. Mr. Lee instructed the computer store to transfer a folder to another laptop and named it "Important Files." The technician later discovered that the folder contained "disturbing" child pornographic videos, and the store reported it to the police. Police arrested Li Jiemin, who was on a student visa, on charges of possession of child pornography and endangering child tranquility.
- In early 2016, a Chinese student who entered Canada was found by customs to have "obscene videos of suspected minors" on his mobile phone WeChat and was immediately repatriated to China. It is reported that the deported student has been studying in Vancouver for 15 months, and when he re-entered Vancouver Airport to prepare for entry, he was called into a small black room by CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency). The reason is that he found a suspected minor obscene video in the WeChat group chat on his mobile phone. Although Canadian police ultimately determined that no crime had been committed, CBSA officers insisted on revoking his visa and deported him directly to China at Vancouver Airport.
- On October 29, 2017, Furen Du, an exchange student at a high school in Maryland, was tracked down to his homestay address after being tracked down by the police at a site that shared child pornography files. Du Furen was found to have downloaded child pornography videos of children aged only 6 or 8, and police found a total of 55 child pornography files. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Salter of the State Circuit.
In recent years, there have been more and more reports of Chinese people involving child pornography, on the one hand, the US government has increased the supervision of child pornography information, on the other hand, the number of Chinese in the United States is increasing, and there will always be several people with psychological problems.
Sun Tong and Yao Yi have different identities in the United States, one is an illegal immigrant and the other is a postdoctoral researcher, but they both made the same mistake, and what awaits them is severe punishment.
We also want to remind all Chinese once again that in the United States, child sexual abuse is a federal crime, and browsing and downloading child pornography files is one of the crimes of child sexual abuse. Although adult tablets are legal in the United States, the red line is that there cannot be any ingredients involving children. Even young children wearing bikinis are photographed walking away, and nude or semi-nude photos of children bathing can cause big trouble.
Because most of the production of child pornography comes from abroad, the police in the United States focus on the "consumer market" of child pornography in the United States, which is why downloading child pornography is a federal felony.
Please also do not touch the red line of the law, there is a market will prompt criminals to take risks, child pornography manufacturers, often also abduction or kidnapping of children in the criminal series. So both from the perspective of avoiding breaking the law and from the perspective of child protection – stay away from and resist child pornography!
Investigating child exploitation cases is now one of the priorities of DHS's Bureau of Investigation, which also led the creation of a Virtual Global Task Force, a multinational effort between law enforcement agencies and the private sector to combat child sexual abuse online.
DHS Bureau of Investigation also encourages the public to report https://www.ice.gov/webform/ice-tip-form suspicious activity involving child pornography crimes through its toll-free hotline 866-347-2423 or online. Both reporting methods are available throughout the day. Whistleblowers outside the U.S. and Canada can call the toll-free number 802-872-6199 and TTY 802-872-6196 for hearing impaired whistleblowers.