Oahu substitute teacher charged with distribution of child porn

An Oahu substitute teacher was charged Wednesday in a criminal complaint filed in federal court for distributing child pornography from November 2019 through October 2021.

Honolulu FBI agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the home of Alden Bunag and arrested him at an Oahu high school, where he worked as a summer school teacher. (The complaint does not name the school.)

Bunag admitted having sex multiple times with a 13-year-old former student, during a voluntary interview with FBI agents. He also told the agents he recorded the encounters with the 13-year-old boy and other minors using camera equipment, then shared the videos with a Philadelphia teacher.

Initially, FBI agents in Philadelphia received a cybertip in July 2021 identifying a private K-12th grade school teacher in Philadelphia, known as AW, as having uploaded child pornography to his account.

The FBI then discovered Bunag on Oahu had exchanged with the Philadelphia teacher more than 3,392 messages, including hundreds of images and video files, the complaint alleges.

The Philadelphia teacher allegedly used a messaging application to send messages over his cellphone, discussing and trading child pornography.

Based on chats Bunag and the Philadelphia teacher had, Bunag claimed to have had sex with a 13-year-old boy at school during lunch breaks and that some of the empty files the FBI reviewed contain videos of Bunag and the boy having sex, the FBI agents believe.

The complaint says AW also posed as a minor on social media to bait minors into creating and sending him child pornography. He even targeted his own middle school students, it said.

The FBI Philadelphia agents were able to review three videos of child pornography allegedly sent Aug. 19 by Bunag to AW, each with a nude minor boy who appears to be having sex with a nude man.

Six nonpornographic photos of Bunag’s students were also sent July 11, the complaint says.

Based on the FBI agents’ review, it is unclear whether Bunag was in the videos or a boy in one of the videos was one of his students, but the agents think the boy in one of the videos resembles a boy on Bunag’s Instagram account on a May 2 post.

The complaint said the FBI has confirmed that Bunag was born in 1988, making him 33 or 34 years old, taught dance, takes senior high school photographs and family photos, and wanted to use the names AMB.CREATIVEMEDIA or ALDEN.ALTERNATEMEDIA for his photography business.