The Chicago Tribune reports that 24-year-old YouTube pop singer Austin Jones has been arrested and charged with child pornography after allegedly requesting that two of his 14-year-old fans send him videos of themselves doing increasingly lewd dance moves and other sexually explicit acts. According to a complaint unsealed on Tuesday, the day after his arrest, Jones also “encouraged them to send him sexually explicit videos of themselves, including dozens of images of them performing graphic sexual acts.” Jones—who has roughly 500,000 subscribers, and whose videos regularly top the 1,000,000 view mark—reportedly told the girls, “I know you’re trying your hardest to prove you’re my biggest fan. And I don’t want to have to find someone else.”
Jones recently completed his first tour of Europe, where he was greeted with rabid fan response. His recent online success had been seen as something of a comeback; his reputation was badly damaged in 2015, when he posted a video asking his young fans to send him videos of themselves twerking. Jones is facing two felony counts of production of child pornography. He’s currently being held in a Chicago-area jail.