Former Lake in the Hills man, ex-teacher sentenced to prison for child pornography

A 47-year-old former Lake in the Hills man who previously taught and coached wrestling at Holmes Middle School in Wheeling was sentenced to prison Wednesday for sharing child pornography.

Scott E. Pollack, of the 6000 block of North Paulina Street, Chicago, accepted a plea deal Wednesday and pleaded guilty to a single felony count of dissemination of child pornography.

McHenry County Judge Robert Wilbrandt accepted the plea and sentenced Pollack to 10 years in prison. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 11 additional child pornography charges and one count of nonconsensual dissemination of a sexually explicit image, court records show.

Pollack also is required to register as a sex offender.

The former teacher and coach was arrested in January 2020, after the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and local police searched his Lake in the Hills home and found evidence of child pornography, investigators said at the time.

Prosecutors alleged that Pollack possessed child pornography involving a child who was younger than 13 and uploaded the images to his Yahoo email account, according to a news release issued Wednesday by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office.

“Sharing and trading these horrific images victimizes children and their families and impacts the entire community,” Raoul said in the release. “I appreciate the collaboration between local and state law enforcement agencies that led to this sentence and I am committed to working with agencies at all levels through the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force to protect communities from offenders who commit these terrible crimes.”

Community Consolidated School District 21 officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Although Pollack had been free on bond since Jan. 16, 2020, he was again taken into custody Wednesday at the McHenry County Jail, where he will remain while awaiting transportation to the Illinois Department of Corrections.