NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — A 2014 "Jeopardy!" champion and former teacher at a Brooklyn private school was charged on Thursday with soliciting sexually explicit images of children by pretending to be another student on social media, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Winston Nguyen, 37, taught math at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, a non-sectarian day school for students in preschool through 12th grade.
He was charged Thursday with use of a child in a sexual performance, promoting a sexual performance by a child, disseminating indecent material to a minor and other charges.
Between October 2022 and May 2024, Nguyen pretended at least 11 times to be a teenager on social media in order to entice, or try to entice, teenage students to send him nude images of images of sexual performance, prosecutors said.
The victims were five girls and one boy, ages 13 through 15, attending four different private schools in the borough, including Saint Ann’s, Poly Prep Country Day School, Berkeley Carroll School and Packer Collegiate Institute.
Nguyen, who lives in Harlem, allegedly utilized two different Snapchat accounts to communicate with the children. Both snapchats—under the usernames "hunterkristoff" and "haircutbongos"—were connected to IP addresses associated with Nguyen's residence, according to the investigation.
On one occasion, he paid one of the children to send him a sexually explicit video, and shared explicit photos he received from other children, prosecutors said.
"A complicated investigation by detectives from my office revealed extremely disturbing conduct by this defendant, who allegedly posed as a peer to coax teenagers to send him sexually explicit images of themselves, which he then allegedly distributed," District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. "The fact that he was a teacher and a trusted figure among students make these allegations even more troubling."
Frank Rotham, Nguyen’s attorney, said that he turned himself into prosecutors on Thursday morning after arranging his surrender with the district attorney’s office and detectives.
Nguyen was arraigned Thursday afternoon and bail was set at $30,000 cash or $75,000 bond. He is expected back in court on Oct. 17.
"We will now seek to hold him accountable and will continue to work diligently to protect children from sexual exploitation," Gonzalez said.
Anyone with information regarding the case or Nguyen is asked to email ReportSNAPCHATImages@brooklynda.org .
Most Popular
Comments / 0