Parents warned after hidden camera in girl's bedroom leads to man's possession of 294 graphic images
Michigan authorities issued a stark warning after discovering a hidden camera in a girl's bedroom that led police to a man who allegedly held 294 graphic images on his cellphone.
Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson announced the alarming discovery in a press conference after the arrest of 30-year-old Nickolas Lee.
Swanson said the case against Lee began last fall.
"It started out with this," Swanson said, picking up the small phone charger. "This simple cell phone plug-in, that was plugged into an underage girl's bedroom."
"But it's actually a camera," he said.
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"If you saw this plugged in, you would not realize that it's a camera," he said. "This is where innocence has been stolen. This is where privacy has been victimized."
"In this young victim’s life, will they ever trust what’s in their bedroom again because of a simple camera that was plugged in with the sole intention of securing footage of a young victim in their bedroom doing what all of us do in our bedroom, where we think we’re safe." Swanson said.
Lee's secret camera invention was discovered by the child's parents and taken immediately to the police.
"We were able to find Lee and arrest him," police said.
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The 30-year-old man's iPhone contained hundreds of graphic images of the girl in the privacy of her home.
"This phone is the creepy white van of the 21st century," Swanson said. "This right here is what holds child pornography around the world."
Lee was charged with using a computer to commit a crime and accosting a child for immoral purposes.
He is also facing 30 counts of child pornography for what police found on his phone.
Lee is being held on $600,000 cash bond.
The news of the hidden camera inside the Michigan girl's bedroom came after a Florida boy was found being tracked by an Apple Airtag.
Jackie Giurleo realized her son was being tracked through the device, Fox 35 reported.
Giurleo told the outlet that she did not own any AirTags when she began getting iPhone alerts that one of the devices was nearby at a Christmas parade on Satellite Beach. A map of all the places her son had been popped up on her phone as an undetected AirTag alert, she told the outlet.
She searched through all of her son's clothing and toys, and said her "heart dropped" when she found the device in a quarter-sized hole bored into her son's shoe.
She said it had been tracking him for nearly a month.
"Luckily, it just turned into a happy coincidence of a tale of two moms," Giurleo told Fox 35.