BOSTON (WHDH) - A Boston man pleaded guilty Monday to possession of child pornography charges after being accused of videotaping boys in the restrooms at Boston Latin School.
Eric Tran Thai, 36, is scheduled to be sentenced on May 13 after pleading guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
On Feb. 6 and 27 of 2018, two separate Boston College students reported to police that they had been videotaped without their knowledge or consent while using the men’s restrooms on the Boston College campus, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Thai was placed under arrest in connection with these incidents and a search of his bag reportedly led to the seizure of several covert camera devices, including faux smoke detectors, a water bottle containing a small cube recording device, and a pair of sunglasses outfitted with a built-in camera.
Those charges are currently pending in Middlesex County Superior Court.
Following Thai’s arrest, a search of his home was executed and dozens of devices, including computer hard drives, thumb drives, covert and regular cameras, computers, iPads, cell phones and multiple SD and Sim cards, were recovered, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Investigators reportedly found several electronic folders labeled BU, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Bunker Hill, Boston Latin High School, as well as several different malls, airports and foreign country locations.
Thai was charged federally for the child pornography allegedly located in the Boston Latin folders, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office says contained about 45 surreptitiously-recorded videos of male students in various states of dress using the urinals and stalls in the boys’ bathroom.
The videos appear to have been created on about 10 separate dates between February and December 2017, all after school hours, the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged.
In general, the videos reportedly showed Thai sitting in a bathroom stall at Boston Latin High School recording individuals in adjacent stalls or at the urinals through various secret recording methods.
In some videos, Thai appeared to hold a camera over the top of the partition between the bathroom stalls and videotaped from overhead, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, while in other instances, he appeared to hide a small camera inside of his backpack, place the backpack on the bathroom floor and videotape individuals in the adjacent bathroom stall from under the stall’s partition.
Thai allegedly used a cellphone or a tablet to view what the camera was recording.
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