A New York City middle school teacher has been arrested for allegedly possessing “hundreds of images and videos” of child pornography.
Per a Manhattan legal complaint, Google reported middle school teacher Ross Lanvin, 41, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in December 2024 after initially flagging 150 images and 90 videos of explicit illegal content on his account. Google also locked Lanvin from the account at that time, per the court document.
According to the complaint, Lanvin voluntarily spoke to law enforcement on Feb. 13 when they searched his home, where he admitted that the Google account in question was his. It further states that he “acknowledged that he had previously accessed child pornography on electronic platforms.”
The complaint states that Lanvin has been teaching on and off since 2006.
Law enforcement confirmed they executed a search warrant at Lanvin’s Manhattan apartment in February and found child pornography on at least one of his electronic devices, per a news releasefrom the United States Attorney’s Office.
Lanvin is charged with two counts of possession of child pornography, “including images and videos of prepubescent minors and minors who had not attained 12 years of age,” per the office. They also said the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
In the release, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Matthew Podolsky, said that Lanvin “had close contact with students as a teacher at a public school in Manhattan [and] possessed hundreds of images and videos of child pornography.”
His statement continued: “Our investigation into Lanvin is ongoing, and we encourage anyone with information to contact Wendy Olsen-Clancy, the Victim Witness Coordinator at the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, at 866-874-8900 or wendy.olsen@usdoj.gov.”
PEOPLE reached out to both the U.S. Attorney’s Southern District of New York office and the NYPD on March 1, but they were unavailable for immediate comment. It is unclear whether Lanvin is represented by legal counsel at this time.
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