Three-time Jeopardy! champion Philip Joseph 'Joey' DeSena, 44, was arrested on October 23 in North Carolina and charged with 10 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. The charges stem from the alleged possession of sexually explicit images and videos depicting children, according to an arrest warrant. Court records indicate the alleged offenses occurred in November 2025.
DeSena, a software developer from Raleigh, was taken into custody while on probation for a previous conviction. In July 2026, he pleaded guilty to two felony charges of secret peeping. He was booked into the Wake County Jail and initially held without bail. A judge denied his bond on Monday, and he remains incarcerated. DeSena is scheduled to appear in court again on November 11.
The Peeping Tom charges followed an incident in December 2025, when DeSena was arrested in Maple, North Carolina. He was accused of installing hidden cameras in a victim's bathroom and bedroom at a rental property in Corolla. Prosecutors stated that DeSena "unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously" placed a device capable of capturing images in a private space with the intent to record someone without their consent. The victim discovered the cameras, described as black USB wall chargers, on October 10, 2025. DeSena surrendered to authorities on December 1, 2025, and was released on $5,000 bail two days later. He received a 60-month probationary sentence after pleading guilty.
DeSena's initial appearances on Jeopardy! were in November 2024, where he won two consecutive games. He lost his third appearance but later competed in the Champions Wildcard tournament in January 2025, reaching the semifinals.
In a separate case involving a Jeopardy! contestant, Winston Nguyen, a New York City math teacher and a 2014 Jeopardy! winner, was sentenced to seven years in prison in March 2025 for catfishing students into sending him lewd images. Nguyen had previously been convicted on fraud charges in 2020 and was given a second chance to teach at Saint Ann's private school in Brooklyn. However, he was arrested in June 2024 on numerous offenses after students began reporting solicitations for inappropriate content via Snapchat starting in 2022. Some of the reported victims were as young as 13. The District Attorney's office alerted Saint Ann's to an investigation into an anonymous account in February 2024, but parents were not immediately notified.