Wednesday, September 3, 2025 - A NYC doctor who filmed himself groping sedated patients and r@ping drugged women he met online has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Zhi Alan Cheng, 35, a former gastroenterologist at New
York-Presbyterian Queens, was sentenced after he was convicted of four counts
of first-degree r@pe and three counts of first-degree s£xual abuse, according
to a press release from the Queens District Attorney’s Office.
Cheng pleaded guilty to the heinous sex crimes in
June. In exchange for the guilty plea, the DA’s office agreed to drop predatory
s£x assault charges, sparing him a maximum life in prison
sentence, according to NBC4.
He was initially charged with over 50 criminal counts
related to the s£xual abuse, the DA’s office said.
“This tells everyone in Queens and anyone who’s listening,
that there’s always a deal to be made in this District Attorney’s office, no
matter how good the evidence is,” Nicholas Liakas, an attorney for the s£x
crime survivors, told reporters outside the courtroom after the sentencing,
according to the outlet.
A group of survivors of Cheng’s sex crimes previously
slammed the Queen’s DA’s office for the “light” sentencing.
“He is getting off light. He can kind of rebuild his
life because he’s fairly young,” one of Cheng’s survivors told
NBC4 after his guilty plea in June.
“You have this obligation to victims of crime, and you’re
just letting people off lightly like this. Why?” the survivor said.
The sentencing will allow Cheng to get out of prison by the
time he is 60 years old, at which point he’ll have to register as a sex
offender while also under 10 years of post-release supervision.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz praised the sentence
and thanked the survivors for coming forward about Cheng’s depraved acts.
“Zhi Alan Cheng committed a series of heinous acts against
women. He did so both as a private citizen, sexually assaulting women who were
his intimate partners, and as a doctor, s£xually assaulting vulnerable patients
who came to the hospital in need of help,” Katz said in a statement.
“As a consequence of his crimes, he will serve over two
decades in prison, with 10 years of post-release supervision and must register
as a s£x offender, likely for the rest of his life,” she said.
“It is most important to express gratitude to the brave
survivor who came forward initially to report the defendant’s crimes, and the
other victims who helped us to make sure no other women were hurt going
forward,” the DA added.
Cheng had worked as a gastroenterologist at New
York-Presbyterian Queens until a girlfriend in late 2022 claimed he knocked her
unconscious in his Astoria apartment by using a surgical mask stuffed with
drug-soaked cotton balls.
The courageous woman contacted prosecutors after discovering
videos showing Cheng s£xually assaulting her and other women, officials said.
A joint probe by the Queens District Attorney’s Special
Victims Bureau and New York-Presbyterian led to a warrant search at Cheng’s
home, where authorities found several horrifying videos.
The recordings showed Cheng gr0ping sedated women as
young as 19 in the hospital, prosecutors said.
Other videos taken in Cheng’s home showed him r@ping
unconscious, apparently drugged women at least some of whom he had met on
online dating sites.
All told, Cheng copped to sexually assaulting seven women.
He also struck an Alford plea admitting criminal guilt but
expressing his innocence to another count of s£xual abuse from accusations
related to an eighth woman.
Officials also seized cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine, LSD, and
MDMA, in addition to drugs used for sedation such as propofol and sevoflurane,
prosecutors said
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