YouTuber Dee Kosh to plead guilty to sexual offences, including attempting to exploit teenage boy

SINGAPORE — Singapore radio deejay and YouTube personality Dee Kosh has decided to plead guilty to multiple sex-related offences, his lawyer told a district court on Tuesday (Jan 25), five months after he was first charged.

The 33-year-old, whose real name is Darryl Ian Koshy, faces seven criminal charges in total — three counts of communicating with a minor under 18 to obtain their sexual services, one of attempting to sexually exploit a minor under 18, one of possessing obscene videos, and two of making obscene videos.

He is defended by lawyers from Eugene Thuraisingam LLP including Mr Johannes Hadi and Mr Joel Wong.

Mr Wong told District Judge Terence Tay on Tuesday that the prosecution is ready to proceed with the case and that Koshy’s instructions were that he is “ready to take a certain course of action”.

The lawyer asked for 10 to 12 weeks’ time to sort out the agreed statement of facts, adding that it will “contain some complexities so it might take some time to work out”.

A police prosecutor said that this was “rather long” and District Judge Tay agreed. The judge then set the plead-guilty hearing date for March 10.

Koshy himself did not turn up in court as he was not required to do so. He remains out on bail of S$20,000.

He had made headlines after accusers on social media claimed that he asked them for nude pictures and sexual favours. He was later arrested and charged about a year after these allegations surfaced.

Court documents showed that Koshy allegedly tried to procure the commission of an indecent act from a 15-year-old boy between March and June in 2018, by asking the boy if he could perform sex acts on him in exchange for money. No other details were given.

He is also accused of separately offering two 17-year-old boys up to S$1,000 in July 2018 and August 2020, in exchange for them performing similar acts on him.

Further, he was charged with offering a 16-year-old boy up to S$2,000 in February 2017, so that he could perform a sex act on the boy.

He was also purportedly in possession of 23 obscene videos in his flat along Woodlands Street 41 on Oct 5 last year, and made two such videos there titled “00001” and “00007” sometime between 2016 and 2017.

The police previously said that some of the videos that Koshy allegedly possessed showed him performing sex acts with others, and were taken without the other party’s knowledge.

His alleged victims cannot be named due to a court order to protect their identities.

Some had posted screenshots of conversations with him, claiming that they had chatted with him via messaging application Telegram and in direct messages via Instagram.

Koshy initially denied any wrongdoing but later wrote in an Instagram post that he admitted that "there is truth to some of the things which are being said now, and I am sorry to the people I have hurt in the process”.

He first rose to fame after starting his YouTube channel in 2011, which now has more than 365,000 subscribers. In addition to his work at Power 98 radio station, he also co-hosted a night-time show on radio station 987FM in 2013.