An Auckland man has admitted making intimate visual recordings of 64 women, some of them in a Newmarket clothing store changing room. Illustration / Paul Slater
An Auckland man has admitted making intimate visual recordings of 64 women, some of them in a Newmarket clothing store changing room. Illustration / Paul Slater
An Auckland man faces up to three years in jail after he admitted making covert intimate video recordings of 64 women, including some inside a Newmarket clothing store.
Although evidence of the man’s offending was discovered on his devices after investigators searched his house and a business, just threeof the victims have been identified so far by police.
Police confirmed some of the women were filmed getting undressed in the clothing store changing room.
Newmarket Business Association chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas was shocked to learn this week of the man’s offending.
People deserved to feel safe, but there were “bad humans” in all communities, he said.
“It’s incredibly disappointing and very alarming. I hope he gets the full extent of what the law is capable of doing in terms of sentencing.”
Auckland City East area investigations manager Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Greaves said officers were tipped off after a woman reported “a man’s concerning actions” in an Auckland supermarket on October 7 last year.
“Inquiries were made into this man’s actions, which resulted in further search warrants being carried out on his devices and the Newmarket business.
“An examination of his devices identified 64 victims, of which only three have been identified.”
Greaves said most of the locations where women had been filmed were in the broader Auckland region.
The videos were captured on a “mobile device”.
The two other identified victims were workers at the Newmarket store.
The man, in his 30s, was originally charged with 64 counts of making an intimate visual recording and first appeared in Auckland District Court a week after the supermarket incident was reported in October.
At the time, he pleaded not guilty and elected trial by jury.
However, the charges were later amended to two representative counts of making an intimate visual recording, and he has since pleaded guilty.
The man is on bail. He was granted interim name suppression until his sentencing later this year, when he could be sent to prison.
Court documents show his offending spanned from June 2023 to October 2024, with 64 separate victims. All the women were filmed without their knowledge.
His lawyer, Daniel Schellenberg, directed Herald inquiries to police and said his client did not wish to comment.
Newmarket Business Association chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas was shocked to learn of the man’s offending.
Knoff-Thomas said he had never heard of such offending in the area before.
The Newmarket Business Association took security extremely seriously. It had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in its security organisation to keep shoppers and staff safe.
“So it’s incredibly disappointing and very alarming, and I hope it’s just a completely isolated incident.
“There are bad people in our communities all across the world and, sadly, this stuff does happen from time to time. We just want to make sure that everybody does feel safe in Newmarket, as they should.
“If this is what’s happened, he needs to receive what the law is fully capable of, the full extent, because it’s awful.”
In a separate incident earlier this year, Auckland man Micah Fala (right) admitted dozens of charges relating to the covert filming of 22 women and girls. Photo / Dean Purcell
He used spy cameras bought on Trade Me and eBay to carry out his offending, admitting to 42 charges.
Before the sentencing, Trade Me told the Herald the auction site’s rules “strictly forbid” advertising the cameras in any way that implied they could be used illegally, “such as making an intimate digital recording”.
However, the Herald later found nine listings marketed as spy cameras, showing the tiny digital devices juxtaposed with images of people being sexually intimate.
After being alerted to the ads by the Herald, Trade Me said the listings were in breach of standards and had been deleted.
Lane Nichols is a senior journalist and Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
