Authorities in Howard County, Maryland, have indicted a man they say was a “peeping Tom,” but it wasn’t windows he was looking into. It was people’s cell phones.
Police started looking into 43-year-old Delano Draine, of Owings Mills, back in December, when he was accused of trying to record a 16-year-old girl in a dressing room at The Mall in Columbia.
Detectives got a search warrant to look into his electronic devices, where police said they found that he was also breaking into the phones of patients at the Columbia dental office where he was employed.
“What we believe is that he was observing patients enter their passcodes into their phones,” Howard County police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said. Once he was able to access the photos and video, “He would save ones — record ones of a very personal nature.”
Draine did that to 37 different women at the dental office he worked in, including both patients and his coworkers, a Howard County police news release said. Police said they have identified each of those victims.
There were also at least 11 victims he “upskirted” in the Howard County area, but police have not been able to identify them.
“At this point, our detectives don’t believe that any of the footage that was captured by the suspect was posted anywhere public,” Llewellyn said. “We have no indication that it’s been on social media or that it was posted anywhere online, which we think is reassuring for the victims.”
In all, Draine has been indicted on 68 different charges, including various peeping Tom, visual surveillance, theft and computer crime charges. He remains held without bond following his arrest back in May.
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