Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A federal criminal complaint has been filed against a Chinese national living in Los Angeles for harassing and cyberstalking a Minnesota college student, announced Acting United States Attorney Charles J. Kovats.

According to court documents, since January 4, 2020, continuing through the present, Ki Cheung Yau, 27, created multiple online accounts on various websites, including social media platforms, dating websites, and pornography websites, using the name, photos, and personally identifying information of the victim. Yau, posing as the victim, used the accounts to communicate with others, seek sexual relationships, and advertise invitations for violent sexual encounters.

According to court documents, on two separate occasions in January 2021, a man went to the victim’s residence and asked for the victim by name, presumably because he believed he was meeting the victim for a sexual encounter. In February 2021, the victim discovered that multiple social media profiles had been created using her name and her likeness, including accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and other dating, and sexually-focused websites. As a result of Yau’s stalking and harassment, the victim has received numerous contacts from men she does not know and has been forced to move to a new residence and change her phone number.

Yau has been charged by complaint in the District of Minnesota with one count of cyberstalking. Yau made his initial appearance yesterday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Gail J. Standish in the Central District of California, who ordered that Yau be detained and removed to Minnesota, where he will make his initial appearance at a later date.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI and the St. Paul Police Department.

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Hillary A. Taylor is prosecuting the case.

A criminal complaint is merely an allegation and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.