Former LTA engineer jailed 15 months for using camera pen to take upskirt videos

Kew Guozhi (above), 31, who faced a total of 423 counts, pleaded guilty to 11 charges of intruding into the privacy of the women by using a camera pen to capture video recordings of their inner thighs and underwear. -- ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI
Kew Guozhi (above), 31, who faced a total of 423 counts, pleaded guilty to 11 charges of intruding into the privacy of the women by using a camera pen to capture video recordings of their inner thighs and underwear. -- ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI

A former Land Transport Authority engineer was jailed for 15 months on Tuesday for taking upskirt video recordings of his colleagues.

Kew Guozhi, 31, who faced a total of 423 counts, pleaded guilty to 11 charges of intruding into the privacy of the women by using a camera pen to capture video recordings of their inner thighs and underwear.

The remaining 412 charges were taken into consideration during his sentencing.

The offences involving four colleagues aged 25 to 40 took place at the LTA office in Hampshire Road between 2009 and 2010.

Over the course of two years, he took hundreds of video recordings of unknown females at Takashimaya, Kinokuniya and Watson at Ngee Ann City. Other places included Isetan at Scotts Road, Popular book stores, Ang Mo Kio Hub and Jurong Point.

The court heard that Kew came across an Internet video showing how to take upskirt videos using a hidden shoe camera in 2009.

As he was keen in taking upskirt photos, he did some research on shoe cameras and bought a pen with a recording device inbuilt in it on Ebay for $50. He tried using it to record a few upskirt videos and when he was confident, he bought a few more similar camera pens from different sellers on Ebay.

When he was caught at Takashimaya on Dec 4, 2010, police recovered four recording devices from him - two shaped like half pen and two black coloured devices similar to an iPod shuffle.

He would bring a few of the camera pens when he goes out for taking upskirt videos. He would clip the part of the camera pen with the recording function to his shoelace so that the device would rest on his shoe to facilitate the upskirt video recording.

He started making about two trips to places per week taking four to five videos each time. He subsequently increased the number of videos to 15 to 30 per trip.

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