Ex-‘Jeopardy!’ champ and NYC private school teacher admits he catfished kids to get them to send twisted pics
An ex-”Jeopardy!” champ admitted Monday he catfished kids at elite private schools in Brooklyn in a twisted scheme to trick them into sending him child porn pictures and videos.
Winston Nguyen, who taught at the swanky Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, said little as agreed to a plea deal that’s likely to put him in prison for seven years — and forever deem him a registered sex offender.
The disgraced trivia whiz said little as Judge Philip Tisne parsed through the charges to ensure Nguyen knew what he was pleading to.
“Do you admit … that on or about May 7, 2024, in the county of Kings … you employed, authorized or induced a child less than 17 years of age to engage in a sexual performance — and that you committed this offense in whole or substantial part for you own direct sexual gratification?” Tisne said in court.
“Yes,” the 38-year-old former math teacher from Harlem said.
Nguyen pleaded to that count and five charges of endangering the welfare of a child, all of which stemmed from actions he took between October 2022 and May 2024, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Court officers cuffed him as his attorney, Franklin Rothman, squeezed the back of his neck and gave his client a pat on the back.
Then the bailiffs led him out a side door.
Nguyen surrendered to authorities last July when prosecutors brought a 30-count criminal complaint against him that claimed he posed as a teenage boy on Snapchat to take part in hundreds of sexual chats with kids as young as 13-years old.
He used two Snapchat accounts to troll for nudes and ask for videos of them performing sexual acts, prosecutors said.
Nguyen victimized at least six kids who attended a cadre of four Brooklyn private schools — including Saint Ann’s, prosecutors said.
The plea deal will land him behind bars for seven years, plus another decade of supervised release. He’ll also have to register as a sex offender.
Tisne will sentence Nguyen on March 17.
Rothman told reporters outside the courtroom that there was “never really an issue about whether or not he was going to have to plead guilty.”
“There’s very little defense one can proffer when you have images on your phone,” he said. “So it was just the question of trying to negotiate the best possible resolution. There was never an issue with him denying responsibility, never, ever — quite the opposite.
“He was resigned to the fact that he was going to go to jail for quite a while, and he’s been dealing with that reality now for quite some time,” the attorney continued.
“And I don’t know what his first night is going to be like, but today, he acted and presented to you the same way he’s presented to me. I don’t know how he could not be anxious going to jail as a sex offender. I think he’s anxious, sure.”
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said the plea held Nguyen “responsible for his disturbing and predatory conduct while sparing young and vulnerable victims from ever having to testify about their traumatic experiences.”
“This kind of exploitation of children, made even more distressing by the fact that the defendant was a trusted school figure, will never be tolerated in Brooklyn,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “And we will continue to expose and root it out.”
Nguyen has an eye-popping rap sheet that included stealing more than $300,000 from an elderly couple who hired him as a home health aide — an act that landed him in jail for four months in 2019.
The now-deceased family of the victims pilloried Saint Ann’s for hiring the fraudster, who used the older couple to fund a lavish New York City lifestyle before a family member finally caught on to his scheme.
No one from the school ever contacted victim Bernard Stoll’s family before bringing Nguyen on board in 2020, according to son Rand Stoll.
“If I was contacted, he never would have been hired,” Stoll told The Post last summer. “It’s incredible to me that no one did their due diligence.”
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