YouTube star Austin Jones charged over child pornography
- Published
YouTube star Austin Jones has been arrested and charged in the US on two counts of producing child pornography.
The 24-year-old is accused of getting teenage girls to share naked images with him over social media.
Jones was stopped at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Monday and appeared in court on Tuesday.
With around 550,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 225,000 Twitter followers, Austin Jones is best known for performing covers of famous songs.
His version of My Chemical Romance's Welcome to the Black Parade has had more than five million views.
According to court records, Jones contacted two different 14-year-old girls on Facebook and Apple iMessage and encouraged them to send explicit images and videos of themselves.
During an interview with Homeland Security, the Chicago-based vlogger "admitted to having used his Facebook account to have sexually explicit chats with minor females," records say.
In one conversation, the 24-year-old is said to have told one of the teenagers "that she needed to 'prove' that she was his biggest fan" by sending videos of herself.
Court documents say his main audience "appears to be teenage girls".
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