A deranged Queens doctor admitted Monday he groped sedated patients and raped unconscious women he had drugged in his apartment — all while often filming the sickening abuse.
Zhi Alan Cheng, 35, shuffled into a courtroom from jail — where he has been held without bail since he was arrested in 2022 — to plead guilty to four counts of rape and three counts of sexual abuse.
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 sexual abuse from accusations related to an eighth woman.
“The level of violence and perversion displayed by Zhi Alan Cheng in sexually abusing multiple victims is compounded by the fact that he took an oath to do no harm as a medical professional,” said Melinda Katz, district attorney for Queens.
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 sexually 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 groping sedated women as young as 19 in the hospital, prosecutors said.
Other videos taken in Cheng’s home showed him raping unconscious, apparently drugged women — at least some of whom he had met on online dating sites.
Officials also seized cocaine, fentanyl, ketamine, LSD and MDMA, in addition to drugs used for sedation such as propofol and sevoflurane, prosecutors said.
Cheng was ordered held without bail and his ability to practice medicine was suspended by state officials while the case wound through the courts.
He’s expected to receive a 24-year prison term when sentenced on Aug. 28, prosecutors said.
