GILROY, Calif. – Police believe Gilroy High School teacher Douglas Le used a porn actress’ picture to pose as a teen girl and goad male students at the school and others into sending him nude images.

The alleged “catfishing” scheme ran from June 2014 through the end of last year and involved nine teenage boys in Santa Clara County, who thought they were in an online relationship with a girl named Rae Pelletier, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

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Police were alerted to the chemistry teacher’s alleged ploy after Facebook contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in April because “Rae Pelletier” was engaged in inappropriate conversations with the teen boys through the site’s messenger app.

Local police searched the 25-year-old teacher’s home and seized computers and other electronics and media, and Le was arrested at Gilroy High School April 26, according to the news site.

Patch.com reports Le was charged with possessing material depicting a minor engaging or simulating sexual conduct, annoying or molesting a child, sending harmful matter to a minor and nine counts of communicating with minors to commit a crime.

Le was out on bail on a $50,000 bail, but a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge increased his bail to $475,000 at his arraignment in San Jose Monday, Deputy District Attorney Jaron Shipp said.

“Using a false name and a picture of an adult pornography actor, Le traded texts and explicit images and videos with the victims, prosecutors said,” according to the news site.

District officials said Le resigned from his teaching position days after his arrest and noted that the alleged crimes did not take place on school property or with school computers.

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“This is a deeply troubling example of why young people should be extremely wary of strangers that they decide to communicate with online,” Shipp said in a statement. “Not everybody has bad intentions. Some absolutely do.”

Shipp told The Washington Post that at least five of the students allegedly targeted by Le were students in his classes, and none of his victims realized Pelletier was actually an Asian man.

“We have identified nine juvenile male victims that he catfished and that he both sent nude pictures to and solicited nude pictures from,” Shipp said. “While we’ve identified multiple child pornography victims, there’s evidence to suggest that there’s more of them.”

Le’s LinkedIn profile shows he graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 2012 with a bachelor’s in chemical biology, then went on to receive a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University in 2013.

He had worked at Gilroy since 2013 and served as head track and field coach at one point, according to the Post.

Gilroy did not enter a plea when arraigned Monday, and could face up to eight years in prison if convicted of the alleged crimes, the San Jose Mercury News.

The case has also spawned multiple lawsuits from parents and students who claim to have warned school officials about Le’s questionable behavior.

The students are represented by celebrity attorney Gloria Allred.

The mother of one of the students, Celest Benn, said she alerted school officials about Le two years before his recent arrest, and they did nothing.

Le allegedly sent Benn’s 15-year-old daughter “a number of sexually harassing text messages” while she was a student in his chemistry class in 2014, according to the lawsuit.

“The explicit text messages refer to oral sex and the size of the minor’s mouth and contain an apparent threat to defecate on the girl,” the lawsuit reads.

“I notified high level Gilroy Unified School District (GUSD) officials as soon I learned that my daughter had been victimized by receiving sexual texts from Mr. Le, her teacher at Gilroy High School,” Benn said in a statement. “Sadly, they appeared to ignore my report and allowed Mr. Le to remain as a teacher and in positions of authority at Gilroy High School with access to children.”