A YouTube prankster who filmed himself feeding biscuits full of toothpaste to a homeless man has been handed a prison sentence.
Kanghua Ren, who is also known as ReSet, scraped the filling out of a handful of Oreo cookies and replaced it with toothpaste, before offering them to a homeless man in Barcelona in 2017.
The man, aged in his 50s, ate the biscuits and was seen vomiting shortly afterwards. In the video which has since been removed from YouTube, Ren who boasted 1.1m followers said: “Maybe I went a little too far, but look on the bright side: this helped him clean his teeth. I don’t think he’s brushed them since he became poor.”
According to court documents seen by Spain’s El Pais newspaper, following an outcry Ren filmed himself meeting the man again to give him €20 and then reportedly paid the man’s daughter €300 in the hope the matter would not be reported to the police.
The judge noted Ren had earned more than €2,000 from advertising revenues generated by the video and accused him of previously indulging in “cruel behaviours” towards “vulnerable victims”.
Chinese-born Ren, who now lives in Spain was convicted of violating the moral integrity of the man in a court hearing on Friday. He was sentenced to 15 months behind bars and ordered to pay €20,000 to the victim. His social media accounts are also to be shut down for five years, the South China Morning Post reports.
Ren is unlikely to serve any time behind bars as in Spain custodial sentences of less than two years are suspended for first time offenders.