$8M bond for Duke employee charged with child sex exploitation

A Duke University employee was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

Yi Yao, 29, of Durham, who was identified in arrest warrants as a Duke professor, was given an $8 million secured bond and placed on house arrest.

Duke University said Yao is not a professor but did not clarify what role he had at the university. The state identified him as a professor at Duke, and the university said he has been banned from going on campus.

Yao was charged with 15 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation with a minor and duplicating child pornography of children as young as age 6.

Each sexual exploitation charge carries seven years and three months in prison.

The state said between August 2022 and February 2023, Yao used the software BitTorrent to download child sex porn and distributed the content. The state alleged Yao distributed the content, and that detectives downloaded the content on several different dates.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security, Duke University Police and Cary police executed a search warrant at Yao's home. The state said Yao confessed to the allegations in an interview.

Yao, a Chinese national, obtained his doctoral degree in China.

Yao's attorney argued that the $8 million was excessive considering Yao does not have a criminal history and his family was with him in the courtroom on Wednesday.

However, Judge Rashad Hauter kept Yao's bond at $8 million.

If Yao pays his bond, he will have electronic monitoring and must surrender his passport.

Yao was ordered to turn in his passport and prohibited to have contact with anyone younger than the age of 18.

WRAL News reached out to Duke University for comment.

"[We] will let you know immediately if and when we have any information we can release," a Duke University spokesperson wrote.

Yao is due in court next on April 26.

The state said it expects the U.S. Attorney's Office to handle the case.