Austin Jefferson Jones is a former American musician who was active as a YouTuber from 2007 to 2017, prior to his arrest for production of child pornography in 2017 and conviction in 2019. After accumulating around 540,000 subscribers and over 20 million video views, Jones became more widely known due to his arrest for sexual misconduct involving minors and his possession and production of child pornography. On February 6, 2019, his YouTube channel was terminated. On May 3, 2019, Jones was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for receipt of child pornography.
Career
Jones began releasing music in 2007. In 2014, he released an EP titled We'll Fall Together, which ended up at number 12 on the iTunes pop chart. In 2016, Jones released a full-length album titled Pitch Imperfect. Jones also made videos of a cappella song covers, such as My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade", Panic! at the Disco's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Goin Down" and Twenty One Pilots' entire Blurryface album.
Legal issues
On May 10, 2015, the music website PupFresh reported that Austin Jones had contacted multiple underage female fans online, each time persuading the girl to twerk on video for him, giving her directions how to perform the act while being recorded. A Change.org petition started by an anonymous 15-year-old girl to revoke his planned participation in the upcoming The Vans Warped Tour surfacing in light of these events did not accumulate enough signatures, but Jones eventually withdrew from the tour and addressed the allegations in a video he uploaded to his channel, "Setting the Record Straight", where he admitted that the allegations were correct and apologized for his actions, while denying that nudity was involved in any of the videos he recorded or any of the webcam conversations. On June 12, 2017, Jones was arrested at O'Hare International Airport by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Homeland Security Investigations on two counts of producing child pornography. In each case he persuaded an underage female fan to make sexually explicit videos of herself, according to his directions. At a June 15 court hearing, Jones was released from federal custody to house arrest in his mother's custody after posting a $100,000 bond, but was ordered to abstain from using the Internet while he awaited trial. He pleaded guilty to a single count of "receipt of child pornography" on February 1, 2019, and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on May 3, 2019. After a court hearing on May 6, 2019, Jones was given permission to remain under house arrest until he reported to prison on June 28, 2019. On May 14, 2019, a YouTube video was released citing evidence implicating Kevin Lyman, Leslie West and Bryan Stars in covering up Jones' behavior and actions. As of June 12, 2020, he is incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto, a low-security federal prison in Allegheny Township, Cambria County, near Loretto, Pennsylvania. He is scheduled to be released on December 31, 2027.
