NC art teacher shared child porn with undercover agent, feds say. He’s going to prison
A one-time art teacher in North Carolina was sentenced to prison Thursday on child porn charges.
Christopher Dean Hall, 35, was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty last year to one count of distributing child pornography, prosecutors in the Middle District of North Carolina said in a news release.
Hall was a visual arts teacher at Gate City Charter Academy, a tuition-free public charter school in Greensboro.
A defense lawyer for Hall and a representative from the school did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Friday.
Hall was indicted Oct. 27 and arrested the following day, federal court filings show. He was held without bond at the request of prosecutors and pleaded guilty in December.
According to documents filed with his plea agreement, an undercover agent found Hall in April 2020 on Kik Messenger in a group called “#dadboyangel.”
Kik is a free app built by a Canadian software company that has been criticized for giving potential child predators relative anonymity on the internet, The New York Times reported in 2016.
Prosecutors said the undercover agent reached out to Hall privately on the app and asked if he had videos of child pornography. Hall responded by sending three videos, court filings state.
FBI agents subsequently requested electronic communication records from Kik for Hall’s username — “chris32033.”
Kik turned over email addresses associated with the account and confirmed it was registered to an iPhone that frequently used one particular IP address, prosecutors said. The FBI then requested records from AT&T tracking that IP address to a physical address in Greensboro.
Prosecutors said the address corresponded to Hall’s roommate.
FBI agents searched their house in May 2020. A search of the roommate’s work and personal phones returned no images of child pornography, according to court documents.
But during the search, prosecutors said, Hall was interviewed by agents and provided his email addresses — one of which was the same address registered to the Kik account that had shared child pornography.
He also revealed that “32033” was his middle school lunch number, prosecutors said.
“Hall told investigators that he had a Kik account, ‘chris32033,’ but that he had deleted it one month prior,” prosecutors said in court documents. “Hall claimed that he deleted the account once he realized people were sharing child pornography on the platform.”
At first, Hall reportedly said he didn’t remember talking to an undercover agent on the messaging app. He then said he remembered “but that he was just ‘playing along,’” court documents state.
Prosecutors said Hall eventually admitted to sharing videos of underage boys.
“Hall admitted he knew the videos were inappropriate and that it was illegal to share them,” prosecutors said. “Hall stated he knew he would lose his teaching license if his employer found out about these activities.”
Investigators ultimately uncovered hundreds of photos of children under the age of 12 as well as images and videos depicting child pornography on Hall’s devices.
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