A former South Florida teacher who was caught with hundreds of images and video of child pornography has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison, officials said Monday.
Roberto Ortiz, a former mathematics teacher at American Senior High School in Hialeah, was also given eight years of supervised release, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.
The 27-year-old Ortiz, who had also served as a teacher at Jose Marti High School in Miami and at Youth Co-Op Preparatory Charter School in Hialeah where students are as young as five, was found in possession of more than 1,700 images and 40 videos of child pornography, the release said.
Ortiz was arrested on July 30 when the FBI executed a search warrant at his home, after they discovered someone at the home was downloading and sharing child pornography through peer-to-peer file-sharing software.
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
On April 13, Ortiz pled guilty to possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.
