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A game show champion and teacher from New York has been arrested on child pornography charges.
Winston Nguyen, who won more than $11,000 across two episodes of the trivia game show “Jeopardy!” in 2014, was arrested in front of students last month. Now, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office has charged Nguyen with soliciting explicit photos of children.
Nguyen will plead not guilty at his arraignment on Thursday afternoon, attorney Frank Rothman told The Independent. Nguyen surrendered himself to law enforcement, Rothman previously told the New York Times.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office declined to provide details on the case when contacted by The Independent.
Nguyen, 37, taught math at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, officials said. The teacher pretended to be a teenager at least 11 times from October 2022 to May 2024 in a scheme to solicit explicit pictures from students, prosecutors told the Times.
Nguyen, who lives in Manhattan, used two Snapchat accounts to target five girls and one boy between the ages of 13 and 15, prosecutors told the Times. The children attended four different area schools, including the private school where he taught.
He now faces several charges, including disseminating indecent material to a minor, use of a child in a sexual performance, and promoting a sexual performance by a child, the Times reports.
Saint Ann’s Head of School Kenyatte Reid told the Times Nguyen was placed on administrative leave following his arrest and was fired on Thursday. He called the crimes Nguyen was charged with “deplorable and a deep violation of the trust we extended to him as a member of our community.”
Nguyen previously spent five months in prison after he pled guilty to stealing more than $300,000 from an elderly couple while working as a home health aide, the New York Post reports.
He used the money, stolen from a 96-year-old and 92-year-old, to fund a trip to New York and buy tickets to Broadway and ballet performances, according to the Post.
