NYC private school told parents it was racist to oppose hiring of felon teacher who was then arrested for ‘child porn’

Administrators at a New York City private school knowingly hired a convicted felon and shamed concerned parents and teachers as “racist,” a bombshell report has found.

This decision to hire 38-year-old Winston Nguyen at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn for the 2020 school year culminated in him being arrested by police in June and charged with a litany of sex crimes against children.

Nguyen, who was a winning contestant on Jeopardy in 2014, is charged with soliciting obscene images from students, promoting a sexual performance by a child and distributing indecent material to a minor.

But despite complaints about his “grooming” behavior and a well-known Snapchat catfishing scheme that led to the leak of nude photos of underage students, the report found that leaders at the school treated him as a valued employee and even once called him “an angel from heaven’. .’

“In some cases, they prioritized teachers, including Nguyen, over the concerns of students and their families about the teacher’s background or behavior,” the report said.

Saint Ann’s commissioned the investigation, which was carried out by law firm Debevoise & Plimpton after the maths teacher was arrested near the school.

Debevoise spoke to 68 people – current and former teachers and families at Saint Ann’s – and reviewed more than 30,000 documents, including emails, personnel files and policies.

The report’s authors, attorneys Helen Cantwell and Arian June, concluded that top leaders at the school “protected” Nguyen — who had previously been convicted of grand theft and other charges.

Also, they did not disclose his criminal past because they wanted to give him a “second chance.”

While the report found no evidence that Nguyen engaged in sexual or romantic relationships with students, it did allege that he routinely “pushed boundaries” and violated policy with his “overly familiar and excessive interactions with students.”

This included handing out snacks from his “candy cupboard” to students, giving them free tutoring both on and off campus, and even bringing food to students’ homes completely unannounced and uninvited, the report said.

“One witness was particularly alarmed because they did not know how Nguyen got their address,” the lawyers revealed.

The report also details how administrators repeatedly failed to investigate claims that someone had catfished students into sharing sexually explicit photos of themselves.

High school students told administrators in February 2024 about three Snapchat accounts that allegedly sent inappropriate photos of girls attending the school to other students, the report said.

Administrators are said to have reverted to their internal policy of not reporting individual cases of inappropriate behavior on social media, given ‘how often’ it happens.

At that time, they did not tell the broader community about the catfishing allegations, but only spoke to the families involved and did not contact the district attorney, the report said.

“Saint Ann administrators determined that communication about the matter would draw unwanted attention to the catfishing victims,” the report said.

“As such, information that some Saint Ann students were targeted by an unknown Snapchat account was not shared with a small group of administrators.”

In April and May 2024, administrators again heard about similar catfishing behavior, but this time it involved high school students, the report said.

Once again they were accused of not informing the community.

“Administrators did not believe the account holder was associated with Saint Ann’s and, believing it was unrelated to the school, did not notify anyone except certain affected families,” the report said.

It wasn’t until police arrested Nguyen in June and told administrators it was related to the Snapchat incident in February that they realized the “messages were likely sent by the same person.”

According to the report, it was Maureen “Mo” Yusuf-Morales, principal of Saint Ann’s Upper Middle School, who first recommended Nguyen for hiring in August 2020.

She had known him since 2006 and had encountered each other while working at various education programs, the report said.

At the time he was hired, the school was short-staffed and needed to “urgently hire short-term staff to assist with the logistics of remote and hybrid learning given the Covid-19 pandemic,” it said report.

Yusuf-Morales was aware of Nguyen’s crimes and when then-Dean of Faculty Melissa Kantor later informed then-Headmaster Vince Tompkins about it, she described what he did as a “financial matter with his previous employer,” the report said.

Tompkins allegedly authorized the hiring of Nguyen “without any evidence of further investigation into the nature of Nguyen’s crime.”

In 2019, Nguyen was jailed on Rikers Island for four months after stealing $300,000 from a 96-year-old blind man and his 92-year-old wife. His victims, Bernard and Florence Stoll, have since died.

He also had to pay back the stolen money.

The school’s own background check — completed in early September 2020 and after he had already taught — showed he had pleaded guilty to grand theft, according to the report.

When Melissa Kantor, then the dean of the faculty, and Vince Tompkins, then the head of the school, heard about it, they retained Nguyen and did not inform anyone else, the report said.

According to the report, Nguyen was even promoted to full-time math teacher in 2021, in addition to his temporary role as a “classroom assistant.”

‘Tompkins and Kantor decided to hire Nguyen in part because of their belief that Saint Ann’s as an institution “believes in second chances” and that hiring someone with a criminal record26 was an opportunity to act in accordance with what they saw as policy of the school. values,” the report said.

Tompkins recently retired as leader of the controversial school. Kantor became assistant principal of Trinity School this fall.

And Yusuf-Morales, who reportedly went out of his way to hire Nguyen, left Saint Ann’s this summer and now works at a charter school in Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.

The NYT cited her LinkedIn profile as proof of this, but this social media page has been deleted or made private.

Yusuf-Morales has also worked as a DEI trainer and appeared on an episode of the nonprofit Lowdown podcast on July 23, 2020 to discuss anti-racist education and parenting with host Rhea Wong.

This podcast was posted exactly two weeks before she reportedly recommended hiring Nguyen, an Asian, describing him as her “mentee,” an “old friend” and “brilliant,” the report said.

She also allegedly insisted that Nguyen was a “reformed” criminal who was a “strong teacher” and “good with children.”

DailyMail.com approached Yusuf-Morales for comment but did not receive a response before publication.

DailyMail.com also reached out to the current administration of Saint Ann’s for comment.

Last week, a prosecutor from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office told the NYT that a settlement was in the works.

This week, Nguyen’s attorney, Frank Rothman, said in court that his client faces at least five years in prison. His next court hearing is scheduled for March 18.