Former WH educator arrested on child pornography charges

Posted

David Kopstein, a music instructor who taught in the West Hempstead and Port Washington school districts for 38 years, was arrested last week on child pornography charges according to a complaint issued by the Department of Justice.

Kopstein, 68, who lives in Franklin Square and retired from teaching in 2009, was charged with posting child pornography on the Internet. He faces a minimum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.

According to a complaint, special agents with the Department of Homeland Security entered Kopstein’s house in 2009 with a search warrant and found files containing child pornography on a basement desktop computer Kopstein shared with his son, Scott. Kopstein said he had begun to notice files downloaded on the computer containing images of pre-teen and teenage naked girls two to three years prior, and said his son told him the images were attached to games he stole off the Internet. Kopstein warned his son that the images were illegal, and proceeded to delete 50-100 images and movies, according to information he gave to HSI agents.

The next day, HSI agents went to SUNY Potsdam where Scott Kopstein was a student and searched his laptop computer where they found a multitude of child pornography images and movies. Scott Kopstein was convicted at a jury trial two years later — in 2011 — and has been incarcerated since. He is serving five years in prison.

Soon after, however, David Kopstein became interested in child pornography himself, and paid by credit card to visit child porn websites. He also printed out photos, stored others on multiple flash drives and began posting numerous child porn photos to a Google Picasa account under his own email address in 2013 and 2014. Google closed the account in 2014 following the discovery of the images through a tip received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

On July 21, HSI agents returned to Kopstein’s Franklin Square home with a search warrant and again found a number of pornographic images of children.

According to the complaint, Kopstein waived his Miranda rights and told investigators that he didn’t understand why he continued viewing and storing child pornography when he knew it was illegal and wrong. Kopstein also said that if he knew “you guys would be back” he wouldn’t have been looking at child porn.

Kopstein was arraigned in federal District Court in Central Islip, and was held pending future bail hearings.

Kopstein was a teacher in the West Hempstead school district from 1969 through 2003, and currently receives a $70,047 annual pension from the New York State Teachers Retirement System.

Kopstein told HSI agents that in his 38 years of teaching he had never touched any child.