Townes Hall, University of Texas School of Law.

 

A former University of Texas law student who last year pleaded guilty to cyberstalking a Georgetown law alum following an unsuccessful admissions interview was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on Wednesday by a federal judge in Delaware.

Prosecutors say Ho Ka Terence Yung unleashed an 18-month online campaign to terrorize the alumni interviewer after he failed to get into Georgetown University Law Center. Yung faced as much as five years in prison, and received a sentence of 46 months for one count of cyberstalking.

According to prosecutors, Yung had an admissions interview with the victim in 2014 in Delaware, where he is from. The interviewer determined that Yung “performed poorly” and Georgetown rejected his application a week later. Yung later was admitted to the University of Texas School of Law, where, prosecutors said, he obtained a full scholarship and was interning at the Texas Attorney General's office as he was cyberstalking his victim.

He created personal ads online for the purpose of sending people with an interest in violent sexual activity to the victim's house in the middle of the night, authorities said. He was successful in at least one instance. Police stopped a man responding to one of Yung's ads outside the victim's house on one occasion.

He also posted “violent and sadistic statements” about the victim online, prosecutors said in October, when Yung pleaded guilty. In one case, Yung posted statements falsely claiming that the Georgetown interviewer had been involved in abducting and raping an 8-year-old girl. He also circulated false information on the Internet implicating the victim in activities such as lynching and molestation.

“The defendant's conduct offers a disturbing example of the destructive potential of the Internet and social media,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss last year.

Yung was represented by Edson Bostic, the federal public defender for the District of Delaware. Bostic was unavailable for comment Thursday.

FBI agents based in Wilmington spent months investigating the case before Yung was arrested in Austin in February 2017.

Georgetown Law issued a statement Thursday that it “appreciates the diligent efforts” of the various law enforcement agencies involved in the case.