E. Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney | U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California
A former elementary school teacher from a San Gabriel Valley school district has been sentenced to four years in federal prison for possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Steven Pilar, 47, from Las Vegas, was sentenced by United States District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes. In addition, he was ordered to pay $115,000 in restitution.
Pilar pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography in December 2024 and has been in federal custody since August 2024. In 2020, Pilar used his computer and a peer-to-peer file-sharing program, BitTorrent, to download more than 400 videos containing CSAM at his former home in Victorville. He was aware that these materials depicted actual children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The videos included content involving pre-pubescent minors and children under 12, along with instances of sadistic and masochistic conduct, as well as the abuse of infants and toddlers.
At the time of the downloads, Pilar was employed as a fifth-grade teacher within the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District. He no longer holds this position. Pilar was initially arrested on state charges in April 2020, but those charges were later dropped to allow for federal prosecution.
“His actions caused direct and significant harm to the victims in this case, and his offense is aggravated by the fact that he was teaching young children at the time,” prosecutors stated in a sentencing memorandum. “In fact, when [Pilar] downloaded and viewed the CSAM, he took part in a perpetual re-victimization of the victims.”
Both the FBI and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department conducted the investigation, while Assistant United States Attorney Joshua J. Lee of the General Crimes Section prosecuted the case.
