US exchange student in S'pore, 23, jailed for stalking 17-year-old girls, hiring Russian hacker to access their Telegram accounts

A 23-year-old American exchange student turned to the dark web to get access to Telegram accounts of two girls he had befriended online.

Kevin Gao, also stalked one of them and a third girl, who were both 17 at the time.

He had gotten to know all three girls online, through Discord and Roblox.

Gao had hired Russian hackers to hack into Telegram accounts of the first two victims and tried to call his third victim at least 1,000 times.

He was eventually sentenced to 20 weeks in jail on Jun. 19, 2026.

Two girls stopped befriending him

Court documents seen by Mothership said that Gao first befriended the first two victims on Discord in 2020.

One of the girls started distancing herself from Gao in 2022, while the other remained his friend.

He met the latter on visits to Singapore several times between 2020 and 2024.

In August 2024, Gao arrived in Singapore to complete a university exchange programme with the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

In that month, the girl stopped responding to the accused as she did not want to be friends with him anymore.

He then decided to visit her residential area multiple times between Aug. 1 and Aug. 12 to confront her on why she had cut off contact with him.

According to CNA, her last message to him on Aug. 12, read: “Hello. We cannot be friends anymore. You have caused me a lot of mental distress over the years. Please move on with your life, do stop contacting me or my mom.”

The girl lodged a police report, and he was given a stern warning for unlawful stalking on Sep. 9, 2024.

Telegram hacking

Angered by the end of their friendships, Gao sought out hacking services to access the Telegram accounts of both victims as he wanted to find out why they had cut him off.

He then chanced upon a Russian hacker who goes by the moniker “Wracker”, advertising his hacking services for US$1,500 in Bitcoin.

Gao asked for help gaining live access to the two girls’ Telegram accounts and was quoted a total fee of US$3,000.

He agreed to pay for the services and eventually managed to get a hold of one of the girl's accounts.

This was after she clicked on a link sent to her from a Telegram account named “Security”, which told her to follow the authentication process in the link to prevent “identity leaks”.

The other girl had also followed the steps but found it suspicious after receiving a pop-up message from the app informing her that an unknown device had been linked to her account.

She then used Telegram’s function to “terminate all other sessions” except for her mobile phone.

When Gao realised he could only access one of the girls' accounts, he negotiated with "Wracker" to get a full archive of the second girl’s chatlogs and media attachments for a discounted price of US$2,500 in Bitcoin.

Between Sep. 24, 2024 and Sep. 26, 2024, Gao gained access to the second girl’s Telegram account.

There, he read messages between the two girls and found that the first girl had forwarded their personal messages to the second girl and other mutual friends.

The angered Gao then asked "Wracker" to create a Telegram channel and upload the messages between the two girls there.

On Oct. 7, 2024, the first girl was sent a link to the public channel with a message warning that others would find the channel if they searched the second girl’s Telegram handle.

The second girl eventually made a police report.

The police conducted a surprise visit at Gao's residence on Oct. 10, 2024, and seized his mobile phone and two laptops.

He was arrested on Feb. 4, 2025 and was released on bail on Feb. 8.

Stalked a third girl

While on bail for the above offences, Gao stalked his third victim in July 2025.

She was also a mutual friend of the first girl and got to know Gao through Roblox in March 2021.

They remained friends from March 2021 to August 2024, when Gao came to Singapore for his university exchange programme, but had agreed not to share photographs of themselves for privacy reasons.

They had also not met each other in person before.

However, she had told him which polytechnic she studied at, and her PayPal address and email, as she had bought items from him in 2021.

He also found out her address after an online seller they had both purchased items from accidentally revealed this to him.

Between May 2025 and September 2025, Gao admitted that he physically stalked her on at least eight occasions.

On one occasion on Jul. 8, 2025,  8 July 2025, he followed her from Buona Vista MRT to a classroom in one of the blocks in school.

At this point, she suspected that Gao may be the person stalking her and confronted him via text.

Gao admitted that he had been stalking her as he wanted to see her, and asked for her forgiveness and sent her $100 via Paypal.

In response, the girl sent the money back to him and told him that she was “scared for her life”.

She then blocked him on the Telegram and Discord accounts they had previously used to contact each other.

Between Jul. 14, 2025, and Jul. 29, 2025, Gao called her 1074 times using 23 different phone numbers.

According to court documents, the victim felt anxious, distressed, fear, panic and emotional exhaustion as a result of the stalking.

She felt reluctant and uncomfortable going to school as she felt unsafe and was unable to pay attention in class.

On one occasion, she suffered a panic attack and multiple emotional breakdowns.

She also had to move to another place of residence and register a new phone number and email.

Major depressive disorder

The prosecutor sought seven to nine months’ jail for Gao, emphasising his “egregious and escalating” conduct, CNA reported.

Meanwhile, his lawyers asked for a two-month jail sentence, citing the Institute of Mental Health report that found Gao has major depressive disorder with anxious distress.

The IMH doctor found that his condition may have contributed to his crimes, his lawyer reportedly said, as his feelings of worthlessness and heightened anxiety significantly compromised his judgment and reasoning capacity, resulting in poor decision-making.

Gao had also engaged in self-harm, cutting himself with glass in August 2024 and attempting suicide while in remand in January 2025, the lawyer added.

The lawyer also noted that Gao was a young university student isolated in a foreign country, and that the age gap between him and his victims was "not that significant", calling for the judge to place more importance on rehabilitation than deterrence, CNA reported.

The prosecutor pointed out that the IMH report also notes that Gao was "not completely deprived of his ability to control his actions, and he could understand that his actions were wrong".

The judge ultimately agreed with the prosecution that Gao must still be "held responsible for the harm caused to the three young victims" and sentenced him to 20 weeks in jail.