A Fontana man who previously taught math at a middle school in San Bernardino has been sentenced to ten years in prison for sharing child pornography online.

Josue Gamaliel Vidal Quintanilla, 31, of Fontana, was sentenced in United States District Court on Monday and was ordered to serve 120 months in prison and pay $9,000 in restitution.

Vidal previously worked as a math teacher at Shandin Hills Middle School, and was arrested in 2020 following a monthslong investigation involving the distribution of child pornography.

He became the subject of an investigation in late 2019 after law enforcement officers received a tip regarding someone uploading child pornography onto the messaging apps Kik and Snapchat. The images reportedly involved sexually explicit material involving children, the United States Department of Justice said.

Authorities tracked the IP address associated with the posts and were able to determine that it had been sent from Vidal’s home in Fontana.

Over the next year, authorities continued to investigate Vidal and his involvement in distributing child pornography.

In September 2020, a year after receiving the first report regarding the sexually explicit images, a search warrant was served at Vidal’s home in Fontana. Authorities interviewed Vidal at the time and he admitted to both viewing child pornography and sending people links to “sexually explicit material involving children as young as infants.”

A search of his devices and social media accounts uncovered more than 1,500 images and 724 videos of child pornography, the DOJ said.

Vidal was arrested and has remained in federal custody since September 2020.

In October 2021, he pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography, in which he admitted to sending another Snapchat a “visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.” That incident happened in August 2020, when he was still employed by the school.

Upon his arrest, his employment was terminated, the DOJ said.

Prosecutors argued that Vidal’s role as a teacher made his conduct “especially disturbing and unacceptable.”

In addition to his 10 years in prison, Vidal will be placed on supervised release for 20 years after his sentence is completed.