Top Education Official Planned to Meet Boy for Sex, Prosecutors Say

He began sending sexually explicit messages, prosecutors said Friday, and made plans to meet the minor to engage in sexual activity.

But Colton was, in fact, an undercover police officer, and Hay was charged in federal court Friday with trying to entice a minor for sexual activity.

If convicted, Hay, who served as a deputy chief of staff to NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, faces a mandatory 10-year prison term and up to life.

Hay, 39, had made plans to meet the boy at a hotel for sex and had booked a “whirlpool suite” in a Neenah, Wisconsin, hotel, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Hay was arrested at a Milwaukee airport Sunday, prosecutors said, on state charges of facilitating a child sex crime.

A search of his cellphone revealed nine sexually explicit photos of a former student at the Wisconsin high school where he served as a principal between 2011 and 2014, prosecutors said.

A criminal complaint unsealed Friday said the photographs were taken when the student was in high school and under 18. The person in the photos told the undercover police officer that he did not send the photos to Hay when he was a minor but that he might have as an adult.

The images were saved to Hay’s phone in 2015, before he joined the New York City Department of Education.

The child pornography possession charge carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

The New York City Education Department fired Hay on Monday after learning of his arrest from Wisconsin police officials.

“These allegations are incredibly disturbing and absolutely unacceptable,” Miranda Barbot, a spokeswoman for the department, said Friday.

The charges against Hay represent the most serious allegations against a high-level city education official in recent memory. The federal complaint compounds a growing crisis for leaders of the Education Department, who promoted Hay several times in the last few years.

The city’s Department of Investigation said this week that Hay’s background check was never finalized before he was hired.

The Department of Education said, however, that Hay had two background checks as part of the agency’s own vetting process, and that no issues came up. The Special Commissioner of Investigation for the department is now looking into Hay’s case.

Hay was eager to meet up with underage boys, according to the complaint. The police officer who was posing as 14-year-old “Colton” received a message from Hay on Grindr, a gay dating app, last summer that read, “Into daddies?”

The police officer responded, “maybe, r u into young guys. I’m 14 not 18.” Hay wrote back, “Yea I’m good with that.”

For the next six months, the complaint said, Hay and the officer traded messages about meeting up in Wisconsin for sex. The officer frequently made note of his parents being in the room and suggested ways that they could meet without his parents finding out.

After having booked a hotel room for their planned meeting this past weekend, Hay ultimately backed out, saying that he had a family emergency. He said that he was “a bit scared” and noted their age difference, the complaint said. Hay still left open the possibility of a meeting the next time he was in Wisconsin.

Hay, a Wisconsin native who had been living in Brooklyn, joined the New York City school system, the nation’s largest, in 2016. He worked for both schools chancellors appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio and was involved in high-level decision-making about education policy. Although he did not interact with students regularly as part of his job, he visited city schools frequently.

Hay was a high school principal in the suburban Milwaukee district of Kettle Moraine for several years but left in 2011, citing differences with the superintendent. He then became principal of Tomah High School, in a more rural part of the state. The sexually explicit photos found on Hay’s cellphone were of a former Tomah High student, prosecutors said.

Hay, who was being held in custody, was expected to appear in court Friday afternoon in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said a spokesman for Matthew Krueger, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Hay’s defense lawyer, Jonathan Smith, said he would not comment on the charges before his client’s court appearance.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .