A gang of voyeurs hid in changing rooms at swimming pools to secretly film more than 5,000 young women getting undressed, a court heard.
Adam Dennis, 39, and Robert Morgan, 33, ‘hunted’ for teenage girls and made catalogues of their pictures to share and trade online.
Dennis even made ‘profile documents’ of his victims using social media and swimming pool club records.
Inner London Crown Court heard the gang spent days hanging around the pools in East London and Surrey for over four years between April 2013 and November 2017.
Their sick videos were only discovered when police raided fellow conspirator Miguel Jose Sainz’s home and were horrified to find thousands of pictures on his devices.
Robert Morgan posing with a 21 balloon in a cardboard box. The 33-year-old pleaded guilty to voyeurism and making indecent photos after hunting girls in swimming pool changing rooms
Morgan (pictured) and three conspirators Adam Dennis, Miguel Jose Sainz and Declan Golden secretly filmed more than 5,000 women and shared the images with each other
The whereabouts of fellow voyeur Sainz is not known while another conspirator, Declan Golden, has fled to the United States.
Judge Benedict Kelleher told the two men said: ‘You engaged both of you in a conspiracy which involved two other men as well.
‘It aimed at obtaining images of women and girls getting undressed in changing rooms principally in swimming pools, and then storing them, editing them, sharing them with each other and in your case Mr Dennis matching them up with other information you had discovered about the women that you were photographing.
‘The principle locations were two public swimming pools.
‘Both of you, it appears, regularly went to those places with covert photographic equipment and spent many hours hiding in changing rooms waiting to photograph women and girls who came into the adjacent changing room or cubicle.
‘You plainly both put a great deal of effort into the planning of this kind of offending.
‘You put a lot of thought and consideration into the kind of equipment that you needed.
‘Indeed both of you discussed also going with other conspirators, together referring to it as ‘hunting’.
‘You Mr Dennis referred in some chats with Mr Golden about photographing what you described as ‘OTs’, older teens.
‘The scope of this was frankly enormous.
‘Both of you were frequently visiting locations and taking pictures, and its suggested by prosecution creating…5,000 separate sets of images.
‘You, Mr Dennis put a huge amount effort into collating them.
‘You could create effectively a profile of each of the women and girls you had photographed for further depraved satisfaction on your part.’
Dennis was jailed for 22 months while Morgan, who describes himself as a part-time musician and senior webcast producer, was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment suspended for two years.
Prosecutor Kate Temple-Mabe said: ‘The conspiracy was initially discovered by police after Mr Sainz was arrested on March 2017.
‘His home address was searched and multiple devices seized.
‘Downloads from those devices are what led the police to the three co-conspirators.
‘They were both arrested on 22 November 2017.
‘Devices were seized and downloaded.
‘Further evidence came in the form of a USB stick found by officers in the US investigation of Declan Golden.’
‘The voyeurism conspiracy as a whole is that it involves going to public swimming pools, these would be pools that had family or mixed gender changing rooms.
‘These defendants and co-conspirators would enter a changing cubicle at some point during the day and close the door.
‘They would have with them a small hidden camera, usually concealed.
‘They would then wait in the cubicle until someone, preferably a young female, went into the cubicle next to theirs.
‘While that person was changing the bag containing a hidden camera would be slid part way in the partition, allowing the camera which was set to record.
‘The victim would only see a bag pushed partially in between the partition.
‘They referred to this activity amongst themselves as hunting.
‘They would select their preferred content, then edit the films they particularly liked into short videos.’
The videos would be ‘saved for their own private viewing or share with other conspirators.
‘They would discuss tactics and strategies for obtaining the footage and even met up in person to go out and obtain them together.’
‘They discussed a usual interest in something they refer to as ‘OT’
‘This is a reference to older teens referring to teenage girls who were old enough to be post-pubescent but maybe younger than 18.’
Ms Temple-Mabe read out a message sent from Dennis to Golden saying: ‘I wish I could have seen some of my OTs from my school days as they were then.
Golden told Mr Dennis: ‘I have another OT on the lower end of the spectrum if you know what I mean, not really my cup of tea but it might be good for trading material.
‘Mr Golden told Mr Dennis that it was ‘kind of exciting to find a whole new side to you, especially one I have myself.’
‘I think it’s because they would be more embarrassed than anyone else.’
Referring to the making of ‘profile documents’ Ms Temple-Mabe said: ‘They researched the personal details and social media accounts of swimming club members and put together what they called ‘profile documents’
‘Open source imagery of swimming club members were arranged next to voyeuristic images.
‘Conversations in the chats discovered indicate that Mr Dennis created those documents.
‘It was Mr Dennis also that conducted the bulk of research into the victims’ social media profiles.
‘Mr Dennis said he was building a database of swimming club members.
‘He made candid comments about the thrill of researching his victims on social media.’
Ms Temple-Mabe read a message sent by Dennis saying: ‘The ones you know who they are – it’s like you have a power over them’.
Farrhat Arshad KC, defending Morgan, said her client was a ‘very much vulnerable person’ who had been abandoned by his parents.
She said: ‘His parents had left him to his own devices.
‘He’d gone to boarding school and then gone off to college in Brighton.
‘My submission is that he was very much a vulnerable person.
‘He was lonely, he was isolated.
‘These men captured and shared voyeuristic imagery over a period of four and a half years.
‘They were frequenting swimming pools multiple days a week for hours at a time.
‘Victims were not only captured naked during private moments, but social media profiles and open source images of them were scoured in detail by the same men who were watching and gaining sexual pleasure from the footage.’
James McCrindell, defending Dennis, said: ‘Immediate custody will result not just in harm to the defendant, which may well be deserved, but significant harmful impact on his wife, but more particularly on the 19-month child which will just be making sense of the world around them.’
Morgan, of Hammersmith and Dennis, of Littlehampton, west Sussex, both admitted voyeurism and making indecent photos.
