Crime & Safety
Bloomingdale YouTube Singer Austin Jones Released On Home Confinement
The 24-year-old online pop singer faces federal child porn charges and must remain off the internet while he awaits his trial.
CHICAGO, IL — A federal magistrate Thursday released YouTube pop singer Austin Jones on home confinement in his mother's custody and prohibited him from going online while the Bloomingdale resident awaits his trial on child pornography charges, the Chicago Tribune reports. Jones, 24, also was ordered to post $100,000 bail during a short hearing Thursday, June 15, the report added.
The online celebrity was arrested at O'Hare International Airport on Monday, and he was charged with two counts of production of child pornography. Prosecutors accuse Jones of online messaging underage girls to ask them to record sexually explicit videos and then send them to him. If convicted, each count carries a minimum of 15 years in prison.
According to prosecutors, Jones asked a 14-year-old girl to "prove" she was his biggest fan by creating and sending an illicit video. The complaint also states that the online singer and celebrity chatted explicitly over Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage with another 14-year-old girl, whom he convinced to send 15 videos of her dancing. Prosecutors allege that in many of the videos, the girl is naked from the waist down, and she is dancing while repeating, "I'm 14 years old."
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Similar allegations of asking underage fans to perform inappropriate sexual acts have popped up in Jones' past. A 2015 story on the music blog PupFresh.com accused the singer of lying about his age to teenage girls so that they would send him twerking videos. The article also included screen shots of alleged texts and online messages from Jones to these girls.
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In a 2015 Facebook post addressing the accusations, Jones apologized for improperly communicating with fans and embarrassing his friends and family, claiming he only asked the girls to twerk, and it never "went beyond that."
YouTube singer Austin Jones (Screen shot from music video via YouTube)
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