Feds: San Mateo driving instructor allegedly used social media to lure teens into pornography

SAN FRANCISCO – A San Mateo-based driving instructor, who prosecutors say used social media to entice and coerce minor teenaged girls to produce child pornography, has been arraigned in federal court on a variety of charges.

Johnnatan Zelaya Izaguirre (Zelaya) appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday. He was formally charged with  two counts of coercion and enticement of a minor, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.

Zelaya’s charges were handed down by a federal grand jury on September 1

According to the indictment, Zelaya used social media to entice and coerce minor teenaged girls to produce child pornography for his personal use and for sale.  

It also alleges that the Redwood City man offered to manage the minor victims’ sale of their sexually explicit content, offered monetary rewards for selling the victim’ content and bought the victims sex toys to use in videos they were encouraged to create.  

Additional details of the alleged scheme are set out in documents filed by the government in the federal court proceedings.

The government’s filings revealed that Zelaya is both a graduate of a local police academy and the owner and operator of a driving school in San Mateo County.

The government alleged that Zelaya used his “position of authority and the powers of social media” to prey on teenage girls.

Specifically, Zelaya allegedly used social media to identify underage girls, ranging from ages 14 to 17—three of which are identified by their initials in the indictment—to entice and coerce them to produce pornography.  Further, the government alleges Zelaya persuaded his teenage victims, some of whom were his students, to create child pornography in part by falsely claiming he was in law enforcement.

Zelaya allegedly groomed his victims at times by complimenting their appearance, developing sexualized friendships with them, offering to manage their explicit content online, and providing a victim a list of the amounts of money she could earn by producing videos depending upon whether the content included nude vs. non-nude videos, videos of masturbation, or videos of “toy play.”

 On one occasion, Zelaya allegedly threatened to leak explicit content to everyone his victim knew if she stopped creating content for him.  

Zelaya was arrested on January 4 after communicating with an undercover police officer he thought was 17 years old. The government’s court filings describe multiple communications between the undercover officer, who had posed as a driving student, and Zelaya that included highly sexualized conversations.

The conversations culminated with Zelaya’s arrest during a planned meet-up with the undercover agent.