Like many educators before him, math teacher Winston Nguyen competed on Jeopardy! in 2014.
Then, he began his fall from grace. In the 2010s, he served time in New York’s infamous Rikers Island jailhouse for theft from an elderly couple.
Now, Nguygen has fallen even further. On Thursday, he was arrested in front of his school’s students amid an investigation by Brooklyn’s district attorney… and amid a scandal over spreading pornographic images.
The New York Post spoke to insiders and confirmed and investigation into Nguyen by the office of Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzales.
Nguyen has yet to face charges, according to his lawyer.
“We are awaiting a decision from the Brooklyn DAs office regarding charges against Mr Nguyen,” Nguyen’s defense attorney Frank Rothman told the New York Post in an email.
“We are expecting some movement in the near future.”
Nguyen teaches at St. Ann’s School an elite private school in ritzy Brooklyn Heights.
A spokeswoman for Saint Ann’s called Nguyen “a suspect in an ongoing investigation related to the dissemination of intimate images via social media.”
She made the remarks to The Daily Beast, the first outlet to report the story. “Upon his arrest on Thursday he was immediately placed on leave by the school and he remains on leave,” the spokesperson added.
St. Ann’s has amassed enough celebrity alumni to warrant multiple subsections on Wikipedia. The school has educated the food writer Sam Sifton, the television showrunner Lena Dunham, the expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many, many more.
The school currently charges $56,400 for kindergarten and more than $60,000 for high school. Plus, it charges extra fees like a “mandatory lunch fee of $1,350” for first grade through seventh.
Not to worry, the average household in Brooklyn Heights makes more than $213,000 per year (compared to about $150,000 for Brooklyn Heights’s median household).
Headmaster Kenyatte Reid sent parents a series of emails informing them of an investigation dating “back to January 2024,” according to correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast.
Reid later specified an investigation related to “inappropriate sexualized images.”
“This incident is very disturbing to all of us,” Reid wrote, according to the web outlet. “We pride ourselves on our amazing faculty and a learning environment rooted in trust.”
Nguyen has butted heads with the law before. Around 2017, he was convicted of pilfering more than $300,000 from an elderly couple while working as their home health aide. He remained in custody until around 2019, according to the NY Post.
He began working at St. Ann’s in 2020, amid the pandemic-era crisis for educational institutions.
“A nonviolent criminal record may not preclude employment,” the St. Ann’s School spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “The school gives a careful and discerning assessment of a job candidate’s potential fit with the school.”
Of course, before all that, Nguyen was best known as a Jeopardy! contestant.
Take a look —
Jeopardy! contestant teacher is arrested amid investigation into ‘sexualized images shared online’ after he previously stole $300,000 from a 96-year-old blind man https://t.co/VCGBKXiAoC pic.twitter.com/UNeUamVoVV
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) June 15, 2024