BURLINGTON — A Texas man accused of falsely claiming to be a doctor doing research in order to trick a Middlebury College student into allowing him to perform a supposed cervical screening has been sentenced to the nearly four years he already served behind bars on a child porn charge.
But Nam Vu Bui’s legal troubles didn’t end with the sentencing hearing held Monday in federal court in Burlington. The conclusion of the Vermont case was expected to clear the way for Bui to be taken to Houston, Texas, where he was living before his arrest in Middlebury, Vt., in the fall of 2016.
In Texas, Bui was charged in March 2019 with four counts, including sexual exploitation or a child and possession child pornography.
On Monday, Judge William K. Sessions III sentenced Bui, of Houston, to 44 months in prison, which is how long he has been behind bars since his arrest in the fall of 2016 in Middlebury.
The time-served prison term of 44 months fell within the advisory federal sentencing guideline range for Bui that was calculated at 41 to 51 months, the judge said.
Both prosecutors and Bui’s lawyer, supported the 44-month, time-served sentence.
The child porn case in Vermont against Bui dates back to October 2016 when police were investigating him for reportedly sexually assaulting a student in a dorm room at Middlebury College. During that investigation, officers seized a cellphone belonging to Bui and discovered child porn on it, according to court records.
Bui had been at Middlebury College visiting his girlfriend, who was a student at the college. That girlfriend had believed that Bui worked as a doctor at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. He was not enrolled in a program at the hospital, though.