Nottingham engineer jailed for spying on victims through webcam and stealing private images
A software engineer has been jailed after admitting to spying on victims through their web cams and building a collection of indecent images of adults and children.
Robert Davies, who is 32-years-old and from Nottingham, used software to hack into his victims' devices disguised with specialist technology so that anti-virus protection software would not detect him.
He then used a remote administration tool to gain access to their devices and steal any sexual images that were stored on them.
On at least one occasion, he spied on a teenage girl through her webcam, turning the encounter into a number of indecent images.
National Crime Agency officers recovered this, along with a further 27 indecent images and videos of children, on his computer.
In total, more than 30 victims of Davies were visited by officers throughout the course of their investigation.
Davies was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday for two years and two months in prison.
He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register, given a 10 year restraining order on five of the victims and a 10 year sexual harm prevention order.
He was arrested three times between November 2019 and August 2021, as officers uncovered the severity of his crimes through his own devices.
Andrew Shorrock, Operations Manager from the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit, said: "Davies had amassed what can only be described as a cyber criminal’s toolkit.
"Not only was he using these tools to break in to peoples’ devices, he was using them to spy on his unsuspecting victims and to steal naked images of them for his own sexual gratification.
"Even more disturbing is the fact that at least one of his victims was a teenager and we found a collection of images and videos of child sexual abuse on his computer.
"Increasing the barrier of entry into cyber crime by reducing the availability of, and accessibility to, off-the-shelf tools is a key focus for the NCA.
"We work with a range of partners to target both criminals and their infrastructure, to ultimately disrupt and deter this type of offending."