San Mateo man accused of soliciting porn from underage boys around the world
Photo: Wai Kit Ching / San Mateo Police Department
Police have arrested a San Mateo man suspected of soliciting pornographic material from underage boys while posing as a teenage girl on social media.
The investigation into 29-year-old Wai Kit Ching, who also goes by Raymond Ching, began in May of this year when San Mateo Police detectives received a case referral from police in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Eden Prairie police had been looking into suspected inappropriate activity involving a minor victim on Instagram. They learned that the minor had sent explicit photos and videos of himself to an account claiming to be a 15-year-old girl named Alicia Harris.
However, detectives soon discovered that Alicia Harris was, in fact, an adult male Chinese national living in San Mateo, California.
On September 29, officials from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations teamed up with San Mateo police to serve a search warrant at Ching’s home on the 4300 block of Camden Avenue. Police say he confessed almost immediately and was arrested without incident.
As the investigation unfolds, authorities have discovered that Ching had been communicating with underage boys all around the world since as early as 2018, allegedly for the purposes of obtaining homemade pornographic material for personal gratification.
Authorities say Ching primarily used Instagram to communicate with boys between the ages of 13 and 15, mostly from the United States and Europe, under the handles @alchas04 and @alchas04_priv. They also suspect that, between December 2019 and January of this year, Ching invited a local juvenile into his home.
The investigation is still underway as it involves multiple crimes and jurisdictions. Authorities are calling on anyone who has had contact with Ching, whether in person or with any of his aliases on social media, or anyone with information relevant to the case, to come forward and contact Detective Sergeant Lee Violett at (650) 522-7662 or lviolett[AT]cityofsanmateo.org.
Ching remains in custody and has since been arraigned on 7 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, 8 counts of contacting a minor with intent to commit a felony, one count of possession of child pornography, and 7 enhancements of the one-strike law for sex offenses.
