A Colorado corrections officer who ran for county sheriff is accused of possessing and trying to sell photos and videos of children being sexually abused, according to an arrest affidavit from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Gage Vidal Montoya, 37, is charged with eight counts of child sexual exploitation related to possessing and intending to distribute sexual abuse material based on tips submitted to law enforcement in 2022, 2023 and 2025.
The CBI started investigating the case in September after the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office requested help with a tip from the , investigators wrote in the complaint.
The initial tip included five videos sent between two users on the messaging app Kik, including one with the since-deleted username “Donttellthewife1654” that investigators linked to Montoya. The videos showed what appeared to be child sexual abuse, including bestiality, investigators wrote.
Task force investigators then linked the 2025 videos to two other tips about child sexual abuse material stored in the Verizon Wireless cloud from December 2022 and February 2023, which included screenshots of explicit images from Snapchat. The Verizon account connected to the images was registered to Montoya, who lives in Trinidad.
Police found photos of Montoya among the images of child sexual abuse and other explicit photos. An investigator also found chats in which the Kik username linked to Montoya posed as a girl younger than 18 and discussed selling videos for payment by Cash App. In one chat, “Donttellthewife1654” had a sexually explicit conversation with another user who claimed to be a 15-year-old girl, according to the affidavit.
Montoya was put on administrative leave from the Colorado Department of Corrections after his arrest, which the CBI announced Aug. 13.
He also ran for Las Animas County sheriff in 2025, according to the affidavit and state candidate records.
Montoya is in custody on a $45,000 bail and is set to appear in court Sept. 2.
