The Spanish YouTube star known as ReSet will spend 15 months in prison for feeding a homeless man Oreo cookies stuffed with toothpaste.
Kanghua Ren was also fined more than $22,000 and was banned from YouTube for five years for the prank, which he did in 2017 at the age of 19. He was found guilty of violating the "moral integrity" of the homeless man, a Romanian man who lived on the streets.
The prank was posted online and showed Ren scraping the cream filling out of the Oreos, squeezing tooth paste into them, repackaging them and then giving them to a homeless man. The homeless man told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that he later threw up and he had "never been treated so poorly while living on the street."
Ren then went back to the same man and gave him money.
"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," Ren said.
In court, Ren said, "I do things to mount a show: People like what is morbid."
But the judge noted that Ren profited from advertising revenue from the success of that video and it's not an "isolated act" as the YouTuber displayed "cruel behavior" toward other vulnerable victims.
{"preview_thumbnail":"https://cdn.flowplayer.com/6684a05f-6468-4ecd-87d5-a748773282a3/i/v-i-b…","video_id":"b23dcac6-2022-4762-8206-98acea28f618","player_id":"8ca46225-42a2-4245-9c20-7850ae937431","provider":"flowplayer","video":"Algerians Reject Extending the Term of The Interim President"}
The judge said he humiliated his victim "to attract the sick attention of his followers" and boost advertising revenue.
Despite the ban, Ren continued to post videos online where he warned his followers not to believe everything they see in the media.
"What did I do to earn your hatred?" Ren asks in a recent video.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
