SFPS Teacher Arrested in Undercover Child Porn Investigation

Ortiz Middle School Teacher Pablo Angeles-Guaderrama charged with criminal solicitation of child sexual abuse material

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Detectives from the Santa Fe Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit arrested Ortiz Middle School Teacher Pablo Angeles-Guaderrama, 34, at his home in Santa Fe, charging him with felony criminal solicitation to commit sexual exploitation of children Thursday morning.

Within an hour of Angeles-Guaderrama’s arrest, SFPD notified Santa Fe Public Schools of the arrest and charges. SFPS placed the teacher on leave immediately and he will remain at that status while the police investigation is ongoing, district spokesman Cody Dynarski tells SFR.

“We will be fully cooperative with their investigation,” Dynarski says.

Angeles-Guaderrama began working at SFPS in August 2018 as a bilingual teacher at César Chávez Elementary School, later becoming a math teacher at Ortiz. Before that, he worked as a one-on-one Spanish tutor, advertising private sessions through Facebook in 2017.

According to an SFPD press release, the arrest was one of two separate recent investigations of child solicitation online. The department’s special unit participates in the New Mexico Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force with the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, a group with a mission to “locate, track and capture internet child sexual predators on Internet child pornographers in New Mexico.”

Police arrested Orlando Perea, a 22-year-old Santa Fe man, on Dec. 19 on the same charges Angeles-Guaderrama faces. Both men “contacted and communicated with the undercover detectives via a social media website, each soliciting child sexual abuse material of a child under the age of 10 from the detectives,” according to the press release.

Court records in the case were sealed as of Thursday afternoon.

“This is common, especially in undercover investigations,” SFPD Capt. Aaron Ortiz tells SFR. One court document states the secrecy is due to Angeles-Guaderrama having “a violent criminal history involving firearms with known gang affiliations,” but Ortiz says that’s an error.

Anyone with information relating to suspected child predators may contact federal or local law make an anonymous report through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, http://www.missingkids.org/cybertipline or by calling 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).