YouTuber faces prison for filling Oreos with toothpaste and feeding them to homeless man
'This will help him clean his teeth. I think he hasn’t cleaned them since he became poor'
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Your support makes all the difference.A YouTuber is facing up to two years in prison for filming himself giving Oreo cookies filled with toothpaste to a homeless man and then joking that they would clean him.
Kanghua Ren, who broadcasts under the name ReSet, has more than 1 million subscribers on the video sharing platform.
The Barcelona-based internet personality filmed himself filling the double-stacked chocolate cookies with toothpaste and placing them back in their original packaging.
The 20-year-old, who is originally from China, then captured the moment that he engaged in a brief conversation with the 52-year-old man, named by authorities as Gheorge L, before feeding him the biscuits.
After he hands them over, along with a €20 (£17) bill, Gheorge L eats them and Mr Kanghua says: “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."
Mr Kanghua earned just over €2,000 (£1,730) from YouTube for advertising linked to the video, which was viewed thousands of times, according to court documents, seen by Spanish newspaper, El Pais.
He is now facing a charge of a crime against moral integrity.
Spanish prosecutors are seeking a two year prison and pursuing an order to pay €30,000 in compensation to the homeless man, an orphan and Romanian national.
The homeless man said he did not know Mr Kanghua had an online presence and wound up feeling concerned for his life.
“I got sick after five minutes and threw up,” he said.
Viewers reacted angrily to the video and Mr Kanghua, who has accumulated almost 100 million views on his channel, went back see to see the homeless man to record another video.
“People exaggerate over jokes in the street (played) on a beggar, when surely if it’s done to a normal person they wouldn’t say anything," he said.
As the furore continued and even saw Barcelona City Council intervene, Mr Kanghua and a friend visited Gheorge L again armed with a camera, with the intention of spending the night with him.
But a witness called the police.
Prosecutors said Mr Kanghua later deleted the video and offered the homeless man €300 (£259) to remain silent about the saga in an effort to “reestablish his image” and “ingratiate himself with public opinion”.
The vlogger had previously offered sandwiches filled with his cats' excrement to children and elderly people, prosecutors claimed.
Gheorge L, who was a pastor in Romania, told El Pais he had never been treated so badly while living on the streets and explained the bar where he vomited after the ordeal frequently helped him with food and clothes.
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