Former San Gabriel Valley teacher charged with child pornography

A former La Puente elementary school teacher has been charged with two counts of receipt of child pornography and two counts of possession, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said Friday.

Steven Pilar, 47, was scheduled to appear before a judge on a federal grand jury indictment in U.S. District Court in downtown L.A. on Friday. He was charged in July and arrested earlier this month in Las Vegas, where he lives. At the time, he was ordered held without bail.

The indictment alleges that Pilar used BitTorrent, a digital file-sharing protocol, to knowingly receive more than 400 videos and images of child sexual abuse material in February and April 2020. At the time, Pilar was teaching at an elementary school in La Puente; according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he no longer works there.

“This defendant, whose previous employment placed him in a position of trust with children, is accused of participating in an underground market that traffics in the sexual exploitation of children,” Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “Protecting children from sexual predators is critical, and my office will be relentless in our efforts to bring those who commit these crimes to justice.”

Pilar would face a mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years in federal prison if convicted. The case was investigated by the FBI and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.