IT Contractor Jailed for Stealing Teachers' Photos to…

In May 2024, a Busan District Court sentenced an IT maintenance contractor to three years in prison for harvesting personal data from school computers to produce illicit deepfake videos. The individual, identified as a man in his 30s, targeted school staff and students over a multi-year period, resulting in a significant breach of privacy and sexual exploitation charges.

What happened

Between July 2021 and September 2023, the contractor exploited his access to school equipment to target 194 staff members across 19 different schools in Busan. He secretly copied 221,921 files, including personal photographs and videos, from school computers onto a personal USB drive. Using this stolen imagery, he produced 20 deepfake videos.

Beyond the creation of deepfakes, the investigation revealed a broader pattern of criminal activity. The contractor was found to have secretly filmed under the skirts of school staff on 45 separate occasions and was in possession of child and youth sexual exploitation material, as well as content downloaded from pornographic websites. In total, the defendant possessed 533 illicit videos, amounting to 405 gigabytes of data.

The Busan District Court’s Criminal Division 7 convicted the man on nine charges, including violations of the Information and Communications Network Act and the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes. In addition to his three-year prison sentence, the court mandated he complete a 40-hour sexual violence treatment program and imposed a 10-year ban on employment at institutions serving children, youth, and people with disabilities. The court emphasized the severity of the crimes, noting that the acts caused severe psychological distress to the victims, though it noted the defendant’s admission of guilt and lack of prior criminal record as mitigating factors.