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Your support makes all the difference.A Spanish YouTuber who filmed himself giving toothpaste-filled Oreos to a homeless man as a prank has been fined €20,000 (£18,000) and sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Kanghua Ren, known by his online handle ReSet, was also banned from YouTube for five years by a court in Barcelona, where he carried out his prank in 2017.
Ren, who was 19 when he posted the video, was found guilty of violating the “moral integrity” of the homeless man, a Romanian known only as Gheorge L.
Despite the court ruling the popular YouTuber must close down his account on the video-sharing website, Ren has continued to post online.
Most recently he uploaded a video which sought to defend himself and warned his followers not to believe everything the newspapers say.
“What did I do to earn your hatred?” he asks in the video, published several days after the verdict barring him from YouTube was released.
The case began when Ren released the cruel prank video in early 2017. The video, which has since been deleted, showed him replacing the cream inside the Oreo biscuits with toothpaste, before repackaging them and giving the snack to Gheorge L along with a €20 note.
As the homeless man began to eat the cookies, Ren said: “Maybe I’ve gone a bit far, but look at the positive side: this will help him clean his teeth. I think he hasn’t cleaned them since he became poor.”
The tampered biscuits actually led to Gheorge L to vomit and he later told the Spanish newspaper El Pais he had “never been treated so poorly while living on the street”.
The YouTuber even returned to record another video giving Gheorge L more money and can be seen on camera saying: “People exaggerate over jokes in the street on a beggar, when surely if it’s done to a normal person they wouldn’t say anything.”
However, a court disagreed and began criminal proceedings against Ren last year.
When defending himself in court the prankster reportedly said: “I do things to mount a show: People like what is morbid.”
But the judge, Rosa Aragones, noted how Ren had made more than €2,000 in advertising revenue from the success of the Oreo video and ruled it was not an “isolated act” as the YouTuber had also displayed “cruel behaviours” towards other vulnerable victims.
Although he was also sentenced to 15 months in jail, it is likely he will not spend any time behind bars as Spanish law tends to suspend short prison sentences for first-time offenders.
Ren’s channel, which has over 1.2 million subscribers, has now switched to mostly posting videos about the Fortnite game rather than pranks.
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