Global articles on espionage, spying, bugs, and other interesting topics.

Unsuspecting tanning customer caught on hidden camera

UNION CITY, Tenn.—A tanning salon employee says his iPhone just happened to be hidden on a ledge near the ceiling.  A woman who was tanning in a private booth says she found the phone with the camera on and pointed toward her.

Police charged Dustin Lee Swinney, 23, of Union City, Tennessee with unlawful photography in violation of privacy. He’s now out of job and sharing his side of a story that even he admits is hard to believe.

He claims he used the camera phone to look for dirt while cleaning the ledge that he couldn’t normally see, and that he accidentally left the camera on, and pointed toward the tanning bed.
His boss, coworker, and police aren’t buying that story.  Local 6 gave him the chance to explain.

He says it’s pure coincidence that his iPhone camera was on and in the perfect spot to catch the unsuspecting woman as she tanned.

He said he used his phone’s camera feature to look for candy wrappers atop the ledge.

He said he was recording because that’s the only way to use the flash.
But the flash on our iPhone works just fine when not recording.

“Well maybe I just don’t know my iPhone well enough to know that,” Swinney said.

The victim snatched the phone from the ledge and took it out to the parking lot where she watched the video and called police. That’s when Dustin Swinney came out to the parking lot and said he would delete all the video if she gave back the phone.

Union City Interim Police Chief Perry Barfield said the woman did the right thing by not handing over the phone.

“He probably thought he could cover up his tracks by getting the phone and possibly deleting images from the phone,” Barfield said.

“It was an accident, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it happened the way it did,” Swinney said.

Swinney told Local 6 while most people don’t believe him, his girlfriend and parents do.  Right now he’s depending on support from his church and looking for another job.

Police fear there could be others but confiscated his phone and his laptop and say they couldn’t find any other video.  They hope this was an isolated incident. The owner of tunnel tanning released this statement;

Upon learning of the allegations, Mr. Swinney’s employment was immediately terminated. We are also cooperating fully with the Union City Police Department in their investigation.