A Main Line father of a young girl pleaded guilty in what investigators call a years-long effort to record naked young women in dressing rooms at one of the country's largest malls and post the videos on porn websites.
"Probably the biggest invasion of privacy case I've ever seen."
That’s how Radnor Township Police Superintendent William Colarulo described the trail of secret videos investigators said Sean Moses shared online.
Moses, 38, pleaded guilty Tuesday to invasion of privacy, loitering and prowling and sexual abuse of children, the Delaware County District Attorney's Office said.
Authorities said the Narberth man secretly recorded women and girls in fitting rooms, at the beach and through apartment windows. Police said they started investigating allegations against Moses in September, when two Villanova University students in Bryn Mawr reported seeing a camera light in their window. Moses uploaded the video of the women on the Internet.
Radnor police arrested Sean Moses in March at his Penn Valley home. A judge arraigned Moses on hundreds of counts including 86 counts of invasion of privacy as well as counts of criminal use of a cellphone, prowling at night and even one count of child pornography.
“What Mr. Moses was involved in … is nothing less than can be described as being despicable and offensive to unsuspecting female victims of all ages,” said Colarulo.
Investigators began to uncover Moses’ peeping tom website in September after two Villanova University students getting undressed at an off-campus apartment complex reported to police seeing a man videotaping them with his cellphone through their bedroom window. The man then took off running.
Investigators began an exhaustive Internet search that led police to the exact videos of the young women on an Internet porn site — the décor and clothing matched the Bryn Mawr incident, said police. The description of the video stated: "When you get caught out of position you ruin what could have been an awesome semester in voyeurism 101," according to an affidavit of probable cause.
“Based on that information he got a court order and served it on the Internet porn site and he was able to identify Mr. Moses’ IP address,” said Colarulo.
Police served a search warrant on Moses’ home — that he shared with a woman and his 6-year-old daughter — in January. During this search, police seized two computers and three cellphones — on each device they found evidence of hidden camera videos, said police.
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They also unraveled a trail of videos that went as far as a volleyball tournament in New York, a summer day on the Ocean City, New Jersey beach and various upskirt videos from King of Prussia Mall.
“You will see video of Mr. Moses on his hands and knees videotaping young girls getting undressed in these types of stores,” said Colarulo before showing some of the videos he said police found on his devices.
The videos show woman in various stages of undress.
"You have young girls on a Saturday afternoon with their girlfriends — they go to try on some clothes and you have a pervert like this violating your personal space and your privacy," said Colarulo, who also said he would like to use stronger words to describe his feeling about Moses.
During the investigation, police said Moses told them he uploaded videos he took to xhamster.com and that he has "a problem with this stuff," said the affidavit. He also told detectives that he shot the videos inside KOP Mall and outside the Bryn Mawr apartments and that investigators would find more deleted content on his computer.
Investigators worked hard to get the videos off Internet porn sites but Moses' followers began to resurface the videos again.
"His fans are reposting these same videos as a tribute to Mr. Moses — he actually had a fan club," said Colarulo.
"Mr. Moses has be doing this for 13 years that we know about," said Colarulo.
Moses will be evaluated by the state's Sexual Offender Assessment board before his sentencing in September.
