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A man has been charged with making more than 100 intimate visual recordings of women across Auckland in offending spanning more than three years.
It’s alleged the suspect used devices to film women covertly at various locations, including a Newmarket shopping complex and the bathroom at a central Aucklandcommercial accommodation complex.
The actual number of alleged victims is unknown but police say “at least one” woman has been identified so far.
Detective Senior Sergeant Ash Matthews, of Auckland CIB, said the 43-year-old Mt Eden man was arrested this month over alleged offending identified on two devices that had been forensically examined.
Matthews said the videos related to alleged offending occurring between January and July 2022.
“A further search warrant was executed at an Auckland address where an additional device was seized, identifying further alleged offending between 2023 and 2025.
“As far as we have been able to establish, the offending has occurred across a variety of locations.
“This includes a Newmarket shopping complex and a bathroom in central Auckland accommodation.”
The man made his first appearance last week in the Auckland District Court. He was granted interim suppression, remanded in custody and is due to reappear later this year.
Documents supplied by the court show the man faces 112 charges of making intimate visual recordings. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
The charges cover alleged incidents from January 2022 until May this year.
While most of the charges say the offences were committed in Auckland, many of them specify Newmarket.
The arrest came the same week the Herald revealed that another man had pleaded guilty to secretly filming 64 women around Auckland, some of them at a Newmarket clothing store.
In that case, police have only identified three of the victims. The man faces up to three years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.
Evidence of the man’s offending was discovered on his devices after investigators searched his house and a business.
Some of the women were filmed getting undressed in the clothing store changing room.
Mark Knoff-Thomas, of the Newmarket Business Association, says the organisation takes security seriously. Photo / Supplied
Newmarket Business Association chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas told the Herald the two cases were disturbing.
“We never like to hear of offending like this happening anywhere, let alone in Newmarket.”
Knoff-Thomas reiterated that the association took security seriously. It had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Newmarket security detail, which operated seven days a week.
In both cases now before the courts, he hoped the men faced “the full extent of the law” if convicted of the charges they faced.
Lane Nichols is Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry.
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