Winston Nguyen, 'Jeopardy' Champ And Teacher, Pleads Guilty To 'Predatory' Crimes Against Kids
Winston Nguyen, 38, pleaded guilty to use of a child in a sexual performance as a sexually motivated felony and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Brooklyn district attorney. He will likely receive a seven-year prison sentence.
He will be temporarily kept at Rikers Island before his sentencing next month, according to The New York Times.
Last July, prosecutors outlined charges that Nguyen catfished underage participants on Snapchat ― some as young as 13 ― into transmitting nude photos and videos of sexual acts between 2022 and 2024.
He targeted potential victims from Saint Ann's School, where he taught math, and students from other schools in the area, the DA's office noted.
'Today's plea holds this defendant responsible for his disturbing and predatory conduct while sparing young and vulnerable victims from ever having to testify about their traumatic experiences,' Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
'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, and we will continue to expose and root it out.'
Nguyen, who previously served time for stealing $300,000 from an elderly couple he cared for, told the Times before his guilty plea, 'I very much take responsibility for my actions. I made bad decisions.'
Nguyen won $10,067 on a 2014 episode of 'Jeopardy' and lost his next game.
Need help? Visit RAINN's National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center's website.
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Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
He asked Tiffany Trump to marry him. Then the deals started coming.
Advertisement The second arrangement involved something less tangible: access to the Trumps. Boulos' cousin promised to get a Saudi businessperson invited to the Boulos-Trump wedding so the businessperson could pose for photographs with the Trumps and project a closeness with the family. 'We want you to be at the top of the guest list,' the cousin, Jimmy Frangi, wrote. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Everyone involved denies wrongdoing, and both deals went bad. Kushner's yacht sits unfinished in Greece. And the Saudi businessperson never got the access (or the wedding invitation) that he had been offered. But Boulos received about $300,000 from the yacht sale, his cousin says, and $100,000 from the Saudi businessperson. A spokesperson for Boulos and Tiffany Trump said Boulos had received only a prenegotiated finder's fee in the yacht deal and had since ended his business relationship with Frangi, the yacht broker. 'Mr. Boulos is proud of and honored by his close, familial relationship with Mr. Kushner,' the spokesperson said in an email. Advertisement As for the money from the Saudi businessperson, the spokesperson said it had nothing to do with access to the Trumps but was instead to settle an unrelated debt. He said Boulos had no involvement in the plan that his cousin had described in text messages. The Trump administration has blurred the lines between family, business and government, with the president conducting diplomacy with the same foreign governments that are negotiating cryptocurrency and real estate deals with his family. The Bouloses are a variation on that theme. The previously unreported deals — which The New York Times pieced together through contracts, court records, contemporaneous text messages and interviews — show that Boulos, his family and his associates were in a position to benefit financially as soon as he became engaged to Trump, the only child of Donald Trump and his former wife Marla Maples. The wedding, held at the president's Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, raised the family's profile and turned the patriarch, Massad Boulos, into an important Trump campaign surrogate. News coverage portrayed him as a billionaire business magnate, even though there is no evidence that he has significant wealth resulting from his own commercial activities. Massad Boulos' stake in his in-laws' Nigerian truck company was worth less than $2, the Times found last year. Trump's election in 2024 propelled Massad Boulos into government. He became a presidential adviser on the Middle East and then a senior State Department adviser on Africa. And Michael Boulos is seeking business there, according to the former prime minister of Guinea. Advertisement 'He is pursuing work,' the former prime minister, Lansana Kouyaté, said in an interview. He would not discuss details but said Boulos told him a few months ago that he was working to 'put together some investors from the United States and some governments in Africa.' Kouyaté said that, as far as he was concerned, the business of Michael Boulos and the political role of his father were inseparable. The former prime minister recounted his conversation with Boulos in two separate interviews. But after Boulos was asked to comment, Kouyaté sent an unsolicited email suddenly denying knowing or speaking with him. Asked to explain the discrepancy, he blamed spotty cell service and said to rely on Boulos' account of the events. He said that someone, whom he would not identify, had told him to email the Times. A spokesperson for Boulos said he did not know Kouyaté and had never spoken to him. Today, Boulos and Tiffany Trump are raising a family. They welcomed their first child, Alexander, in May. Trump has kept a low profile but this week shared photos on Instagram of the family boating and of scenes from the French Riviera. With the Boulos family close to power, associates are also seeking their own opportunities. Around the time of the presidential inauguration, Habib Saidi, a businessperson and close friend of the Bouloses, was sitting with Boulos at Mar-a-Lago when he spotted Kacy Grine, a financier with deep ties in Saudi Arabia, dining on the terrace. Saidi stepped away from Boulos and, in front of others, introduced himself to Grine. Saidi said he and his friends wanted to use the opportunity, while they were close to the center of American power, to do business in the Middle East, according to a person who witnessed the conversation. Saidi mentioned construction projects in Saudi Arabia. Advertisement Saidi said he had no recollection of the conversation. Grine said he would not discuss his business interests. The Superyacht 'Solstice' As a young yacht broker, Boulos had a knack for business development, Frangi recalled. Boulos identified his soon-to-be brother-in-law Jared Kushner as a potential client, and brought Frangi to meet him. The cousins made an investment pitch: Get a good deal on a yacht, refurbish it and sell or lease it as a moneymaker. By June 2021, documents show, Boulos was sending Kushner sales presentations about an unfinished yacht, later named the Solstice. The firm told Kushner that the price to acquire the yacht was about $15 million at the time. That included costs and a flat brokerage commission of 1 million euros for Boulos, Frangi and their colleagues. 'Just so we understand the business deal,' Kushner said on a call, according to portions of a transcript, 'you are going to make 1mm on the closing.' But according to Frangi's text messages at the time, his firm was making much more than that. The brokers were spending millions less to acquire the yacht than they claimed to Kushner, according to Frangi's messages. 'THIS MAKES US 3.5,' Frangi told an associate. The text messages show that his brokerage worked to conceal the details from Kushner. 'It's going to be difficult to hide,' an executive at the firm wrote. He said it was important that Kushner not hire an independent appraiser. Boulos was not copied on those messages, and it is not clear whether he was aware of this aspect of the plan. But text messages make clear that he was personally engaged in the process. When Kushner's lawyer seemed to be slowing the deal down, for example, Boulos made his displeasure known inside the firm. 'Me and Tiffany,' he wrote to associates, are 'pissed off.' Advertisement The family spokesperson said Tiffany Trump had 'no knowledge of or interest in any part of these transactions.' The sale closed in early 2022. Frangi said he had made about $400,000 from the commission, and that Boulos had made $300,000. Frangi also acknowledged taking extra money that had been earmarked for transaction fees. But he said it was a few hundred thousand dollars, not millions. He said that it was wrong to think of the price as inflated. He said the deal called for Kushner's investment group to pay a single sum to buy, transport and insure the yacht. If Frangi could do it all for less, then of course he'd make more profit, he said. If that was the deal, that is not what the contracts say. As for his text messages, Frangi said they were unreliable. 'I write usually very erratic and I just throw things and I always live in the future and everybody knows that about me,' he wrote in a text message to the Times. Kushner eventually realized that he had been overcharged, according to a lawyer who recounted the deal during a client's financial dispute with Frangi. The lawyer, Taylor Howard, wrote that Kushner had been overcharged by $2.5 million and confronted Frangi, who concealed the reason for the higher price. 'In reality, Mr. Frangi was using that to bolster his returns on the transaction,' Howard wrote. Advertisement A spokesperson for Kushner declined to comment on details of the deal. He said Boulos had recently been doing a 'great job' working to find a new buyer for the yacht, and that a deal was pending. The Saudi Deal On June 22, 2022, a few months after the yacht deal closed, Boulos and Frangi gathered at the Virginia home of a wealthy Saudi businessperson. Frangi knew the businessperson, Abdulelah Allam, through the yacht business and was millions of dollars in debt to him. Allam was in Virginia in self-imposed exile. He had potentially billions of dollars in real estate seized by the Saudi government during a 2017 corruption crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and was desperate to get his property back. Frangi came up with a plan, text messages show: He could use his relationship with Boulos and the Trump family to help Allam persuade the crown prince to return his property. In exchange, Frangi said, he wanted Allam to forgive his debt and cut him in on a future business deal. Boulos had needs of his own, Frangi said. 'He needs 25,000$,' he told Allam in a text message before the meeting. 'Is loan. I told him.' He included Boulos' name and bank account information. The day of the Virginia meeting, Allam texted that he had deposited $100,000 into Boulos' account. Everyone involved said the money was not intended to buy access. But they offered contradictory explanations for it. According to Boulos' spokesperson, Frangi's 'financially struggling company' owed Boulos money. So, at Frangi's request, the Saudi businessperson settled the debt by paying Boulos himself, the spokesperson said. But an aide to Allam said the money was a loan to Boulos that Boulos still intended to repay. Frangi has explained the money in different ways, at times calling it a loan to Boulos and at other times calling it the settling of a debt. Whatever the purpose, in the weeks and months that followed the $100,000 bank deposit, Frangi detailed plans to 'soften up' Saudi officials. Part of that involved presenting Allam as being close to the Trumps. 'We have a month and a half to get everything started before the wedding,' Frangi wrote in text messages. They strategized about photographs and access. 'Would be good you fly with Michael and Tiffany pls,' he wrote to Allam. Later, in Arabic, he added, 'Please delete all texts.' Boulos was not copied on those text messages. Allam's aide, Rashad el-Hassanieh, said: 'Mikey never promised anything. He said, 'I'll listen, but I can't promise anything.'' Boulos was not involved, his spokesperson said. 'Mr. Boulos has never dealt with, been involved with, nor discussed Mr. Allam's Saudi Arabia concerns with anyone, including Mr. Allam himself,' he said. As months went on, people around Allam warned him that the plan had little chance of working, messages show. They were right. Allam never got his wedding invite, his access or his property back. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Alberta boy escapes alleged abductor's car in 'catch a predator scheme' police call 'amazingly dangerous'
A 12-year-old boy escaped from the car of an alleged abductor that he and a group of other children arranged to meet as part of a "catch a predator scheme" they had devised on the Snapchat app, according to Alberta RCMP, who are strongly discouraging this type of vigilante activity. The boy was allegedly abducted on Monday evening after getting into the suspect's vehicle in the Coopers Crossing neighbourhood of Airdrie, just north of Calgary. Police said he and a group of at least six other children in the same age range, possibly as many as 10 in total, started a conversation with the suspect and arranged to meet him via Snapchat, without the knowledge of any parents, in an attempt to expose the man as a child predator. "Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned," said RCMP Cpl. Gina Slaney. The 12-year-old boy voluntarily entered the suspect's vehicle so the other youth could record the interaction on video, police said, and the suspect then drove away. The boy later escaped from the vehicle while it was stopped at a red light and called 911. The suspect fled in the vehicle, southbound on Highway 2 toward Calgary. With help from a Calgary police helicopter, he was later located at a home in the city's northeast. Suspect has 'history with police' Airdrie RCMP have now charged a 37-year-old Calgary man, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, with numerous offences including abduction of a person under the age of 14, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, kidnapping and forcible confinement, and three counts of breaching a prohibition order. Cpl. Christopher Hrynyk with the Airdrie RCMP's specialized investigation unit said the suspect has "a history with police" and the breach charges relate to "previous investigations which did encapsulate minors being involved." "We've had more than one investigation and file with this offender," added Staff Sgt. Mark Auger with the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team's internet child exploitation unit. Social media trend 'dangerous,' police say Auger said the children's attempt at vigilante justice is part of a "growing trend" on social media that began in the United States and has migrated to Canada. "In my opinion, this all came from the television program To Catch a Predator," he said. Auger said the difference between that long-running American reality show and what people have been doing on social media is that the show involved police officers from the get-go, whereas the social media versions are typically amateur operations that put people at significant risk of harm. "A lot of these setups and these stings will end in violence, in suicide, in sexual assault," he said. The evidence gathered by vigilantes "ad-libbing" their way through online conversations with potential predators also presents "horrendous" challenges for actually prosecuting any alleged crimes, Auger said. "A lot of that will be what we consider tainted evidence because we don't how the script went, how the conversation went. Was it entrapment? Who started the conversation down that road?" Police also urged parents to have conversations with their kids about online behaviour like this. "It's amazingly dangerous what happened with this incident," Auger said.
CBS News
15 hours ago
- CBS News
Michigan orthodontist accused of sexually exploiting teens on Snapchat
A West Michigan orthodontist is accused of sexually exploiting teens on Snapchat. According to a criminal complaint, Thomas Shannon, 43, was charged after a therapist reported that a 16-year-old had been sexually exploited on Snapchat. Investigators identified Shannon as a suspect using Snapchat and Cash App records. Federal prosecutors allege that Shannon hired a private forensic examiner to review his cellphone to prove that he did not have child pornography. The forensic examiner, however, found child pornography on the phone, prosecutors say, and turned the phone over to police. While investigators were reviewing Shannon's phone and Snapchat record, they found additional underage victims, including one who is 12 years old. Another minor also came forward and said she met Shannon online and that he allegedly asked her to video chat with him while he engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Shannon was arrested in Frankfort, Michigan, and is charged with attempted receipt of child pornography, receipt of child pornography, possession of child pornography, attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, and sexual exploitation of a minor. Attorneys say Shannon's case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Kent County Sheriff's Office, the Fuquay-Varina Police Department in North Carolina and the Prince George's County Police Department in Maryland. The case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative aimed at protecting children from online exploitation and abuse.
