60-year-old Man Hacked 772 Cameras Worldwide to Spy Through Webcams

A father of three is facing jail time after IT professionals tipped off the FBI about him hacking into hundreds of webcams around the world to spy on women undressed and having sex.

IT personnel at Georgia Tech in Atlanta notified the FBI after discovering malware on a student’s laptop in the aerospace lab, leading to the arrest of 60-year-old Christopher Taylor.

Taylor had duped 772 people across 39 nations into giving him remote access to their computers, allowing him to spy on their activities in private for a whole three years.

The married man allegedly saw 47 women having sexual relations with their partners from the laptop he kept in his £170,000 semi-detached property in Wigan, Greater Manchester.

A prosecutor has claimed that the sophisticated spyware systems’ at Georgia Tech uncovered the malware on a student’s laptop. The FBI was able to trace it back to Taylor’s residence in northwest England.

Taylor wiped out hundreds of files before his detention, according to the probe.

Taylor, a full-time carer for his wife Wendy, told officers: ‘It’s just what I’ve been meddling with on the computer’ when the British police raided his residence.

A judge in London concluded that his extradition to the United States to stand trial for wire and computer fraud would ‘negatively affect’ his sick wife, so the request was denied.

Taylor might be sent to prison today, over seven years after his initial arrest, on charges of voyeurism and unlawful access to computer material.

Taylor also confessed to possessing extreme pornography after police discovered explicit photos and videos on his gadgets.

Bolton Crown Court heard that the defendant used a phoney link posted on porn sites to trick his victims into giving him access to their computers.

It was discovered that he had accumulated over 80,000 pictures and videos from 2012–2015.

‘Many of these images and videos captured people eating, working, lying in bed and doing yoga,’ Neil Fryman, prosecuting, told the hearing.

‘However, there were also a number of images that showed people in various stages of undress and involved in sexual activity.’

Defence attorney Andrew Jebb said that his client “still struggles to provide an obvious answer as to why all of this began.”

He told the court that Taylor’s obsession ‘merely started out as an interest in viruses before it developed into something more sinister’.

Taylor, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, previously said he had not used the virus for ‘sexual gratification’ or targeted anyone in particular, but rather had an ‘obsessive interest’ in computers and hacking.

According to testimony presented during his failed extradition hearing in 2020, he had grown ‘fascinated’ by the prospect of spying on others through their webcams.

The law provides for a maximum sentence of two years in prison for him.