NTU exchange student from US jailed for stalking teens and hiring hacker to breach their Telegram

An American exchange student at Nanyang Technological University was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail in Singapore for stalking three 17-year-old girls and paying a hacker to break into their Telegram accounts.

Kevin Gao, 23, had befriended all three girls online through Discord and Roblox, CNA reported from the sentencing hearing on June 19. He met two of them in 2020 and stayed in contact with one until 2024, the year he arrived at NTU on an exchange programme.

When she cut off contact that August, Gao repeatedly turned up at her home to confront her over why, and was given a police warning for unlawful stalking.

Angered by the lost friendships, he turned to the dark web, court documents seen by Mothership showed. He paid a hacker known as "Wracker" thousands of dollars in Bitcoin to break into the two girls' Telegram accounts.

He tricked one into clicking a phishing link; the other spotted the attempt and locked him out. After reading the messages in the breached account, Gao had the hacker upload the girls' private chats to a public Telegram channel.

Police searched his home in October 2024 and arrested him the following February. He was released on bail within days.

While on bail, Gao stalked a third girl he had met through Roblox. He had obtained her address after an online seller revealed it by accident.

Between May and September 2025, he followed her on at least eight occasions, including from an MRT station into a classroom on her campus. When she confronted him by text, he apologized and sent her S$100 (US$77), which she returned, telling him she was "scared for her life."

Between July 14 and July 29, he called her 1,074 times from 23 different phone numbers. She told the court she lived in fear, suffered a panic attack and repeated breakdowns, and eventually moved home and changed her phone number and email.

Prosecutors sought seven to nine months in jail, citing Gao's "egregious and escalating" conduct, CNA reported. His lawyers asked for two months, pointing to an Institute of Mental Health report that diagnosed major depressive disorder and found his condition may have compromised his judgment. They said he had self-harmed and attempted suicide while in remand.

Prosecutors countered that the same report found he was not deprived of the ability to control his actions and understood they were wrong. The judge agreed he had to be held responsible for the harm to all three girls.