Major illicit hotel spy-cam operation busted in South Korea

South Korean men secretly filmed about 1,600 guests over a six-month period at multiple motels and live-streamed the footage online for paying customers to watch, according to police.

The Cyber Investigation Department at the National Police Agency announced the shocking bust on Wednesday, revealing that two men have been arrested in connection with the scheme and another two are being investigated, the Korea Herald reports.

The scandal involved more than 40 rooms in 30 different motels across 10 South Korean cities. Tiny cameras about the size of a screw were hidden inside TVs, wall sockets and hair-dryer units, however police say there’s no indication that the businesses were aware of the goings-on.

The website that streamed the content had more than 4,000 members, some of whom paid a monthly subscription fee of $44.95 for added features, like video replay. The service generated more than $6,000 between November 2018 and this month, according to police.

“There was a similar case in the past where illegal cameras were (secretly installed) and were consistently and secretly watched, but this is the first time the police caught where videos were broadcast live on the internet,” police said in a statement.

A conviction for distributing illegal videos is punishable by jail time and a penalty of about $27,000, the Korea Herald reported. Last year 30,000 women took to the streets of Seoul to call for tougher sentences, after it emerged that spy cams were being used to film women in public toilets.

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