Ian Imamura
Introduction
Ian Ikaika Imamura, a 28-year-old choir teacher and football coach at Central High School in Independence, Oregon, was arrested on July 2, 2026 and charged with eight felonies — three of them Measure 11 major sex crimes carrying mandatory minimum prison sentences — over an online deception authorities say he ran against his own students. Prosecutors allege Imamura spent years posing as a music producer with Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa connections, then impersonated actor Walker Scobell and Grande herself in fake accounts used to sexually coerce a 17-year-old student into sending explicit videos and photos. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges; the Central School District placed him on administrative leave and records describe him as dismissed.
Background Information
Imamura grew up on Oahu, Hawaii, and majored in music education and business accounting at Pacific University in Forest Grove, graduating in 2022. He student-taught at Sherwood Middle School and Sherwood High School during the 2022–23 school year — a period Sherwood police later asked anyone with information about to come forward — before becoming Central High’s vocal music teacher, choir director and a football coach, with credits in school musicals such as “Legally Blonde” and “Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.” In the classroom, prosecutors say, he told students he was a music producer who had worked with Grande, Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars, Adele and Lady Gaga, that he kept a Grammy “sitting in his garage,” and that famed musicians and actors were on speed dial.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Charged, not convicted. The eight felony counts against Ian Imamura — including using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct — are prosecutors’ allegations from court filings, not findings by any court. He has pleaded not guilty, his suppression motions are pending, and prosecutors say additional charges are possible. This page documents the charges and the school district’s own paper trail.
Deputy District Attorney Shannon Clausen told a July court hearing that Imamura connected a 17-year-old student with an online account that appeared to belong to Walker Scobell, the teenage lead of Disney+’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” — a persona prosecutors allege Imamura himself was secretly running. “The alleged victim and the Scobell persona began dating via text message,” Clausen said, and the relationship turned sexual between April and June of 2026: the girl allegedly sent explicit videos and photos at the persona’s request, shared a remote-control link to a sex toy sent to her, and exchanged more than 13,000 texts over roughly a year and a half with someone she believed was the actor and, in a second fake account, Ariana Grande herself. “Law enforcement learned the defendant had purchased the alleged victim a new phone, a phone that she kept secret from her parents, to communicate with the Walker persona and the Ariana Grande persona,” Clausen told the court. Scobell’s representatives confirmed the actor had no connection to the case and did not know Imamura or the student.
Court filings allege Imamura compelled a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct for recording on or around May 10, June 17 and June 24 of 2026, and that he duplicated, published, disseminated or attempted to sell recordings of the conduct, and possessed them. Polk County Circuit Court records show three counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, a Class A felony, plus encouraging child sexual abuse in the first and second degrees, and luring a minor, computer crime and identity theft; the Independence Police Department’s arrest post also listed online sexual corruption of a child, possession of such material, and tampering with a witness. The district’s internal file, laid out in court records, runs: a DHS report that Imamura “had introduced one of his students to a celebrity, sparking a romantic relationship between the two,” HR Director Brian Flannery’s two recorded interviews with him on June 16 and 18, and the district’s contact with Independence Police on June 23. On July 2, Imamura told the district by Zoom that he was in Hawaii; police arrested him in Oregon that evening. When detectives searched his phone in July, prosecutors say, he could not answer basic music-industry questions, refused to say whether he knew Scobell, and a second phone belonging to him had been wiped clean — and around the same time, both the fake accounts and Imamura himself allegedly urged the girl to delete the messages prosecutors call their key evidence.
Public Reaction and Consequences
Students, it turns out, had been fact-checking him for years. “Pretty much anything he ever told us, we would search for online,” a former student who spent three years in Imamura’s classes told FOX 12. “And we would look for records and evidence and never found any of it.” Staff described a checked-out teacher who held court behind a closed office door — “mood lighting,” Christmas lights, “two female students in his office,” one staff member said, accounts that are allegations, not findings. District records obtained by FOX 12 show written concerns dating to June 2025: a parent’s email to then-Principal Greg English, renewed complaints to Principal Rick Dormer, students dropping his classes and a March 18, 2026 group meeting over how Imamura “mistreats and neglects his various electives,” and a May 21, 2026 parent letter describing closed-door meetings with female students and late-night texts “sometimes when he seems to have been drinking.” Dormer wrote back on May 25 that everything “have been investigated, involving Mrs. Johnson as his supervising principal, the teacher’s union, and human resources” — one day before the district says its investigation began. One staff member said a colleague who called Oregon DHS over Imamura was himself investigated by the district: “That message that came back to all of us was loud: it’s not encouraged to protect children.”
Current Status
Imamura was arraigned July 6, 2026 in Polk County Circuit Court on the eight charges and remained in the Polk County Jail. At a July 14 hearing, his attorney Chris Heywood asked that he be allowed to live with family in Hawaii pending trial; Clausen objected, calling his “web of lies and deceptive behavior” flight-risk evidence, and the judge denied the request and ordered him to remain in Oregon. He has pleaded not guilty, and the case remains pending: his suppression motions — targeting statements he made to the district and evidence from his vehicle search — are undecided, court records in July set a tentative August 25 jury trial, and prosecutors say they are still reviewing his phone data and that more charges are possible. Sherwood Police, meanwhile, have asked anyone who interacted with him during his 2022–23 student-teaching year to come forward.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Imamura’s teaching career is over in Independence — the district confirms his administrative leave became a dismissal — and a conviction on the Measure 11 counts would carry mandatory minimum prison time. The case has become a case study in a new grooming vector: a teacher fabricating celebrity proximity, then weaponizing fake accounts of a real teenager’s favorite actor and a real pop star, with the actor’s own lawyers forced to publicly sever him from it. And it has put the district’s paper trail under scrutiny — FOX 12’s records review, bluntly titled “‘Nobody listened,’” found written warnings reaching back nearly a year before the investigation the district cites.
Sources
- New York Post, “West Coast teacher pretended to be music exec to sexually coerce students,” Oct 22, 2026 — source
- FOX 12 Oregon (KPTV), “Prosecutors: Oregon teacher impersonated Ariana Grande, teen actor to groom his own students,” Sep 3, 2026 — source
- FOX 12 Oregon (KPTV), “‘Nobody listened’: Records show OR school ignored warnings for months about teacher facing sex crimes,” Oct 21, 2026 — source
- OnStage Blog, “High School Choir Teacher Accused of Impersonating Ariana Grande in Alleged Grooming Scheme,” Sep 4, 2026 — source
- Salem Statesman Journal (via The Gardner News), “Central High School choir director arraigned on child porn charges,” Jul 6, 2026 — source