Freelancer who took and sold upskirt videos jailed 2.5 months

SINGAPORE — When the freelancer came across websites where people sold upskirt videos online for money, he thought he could get another source of income by doing so.

Around Aug 29 last year, the 34-year-old began filming and selling upskirt videos, but he managed to earn only S$30 before he was caught red-handed two days later.

Kuah Wee Beng Kelvin, who worked in a warehouse as a freelance operations staff, was sentenced to 10 weeks’ jail on Tuesday (Sept 18) after pleading guilty to taking upskirt videos of two women in a Daiso store at Waterway Point in Punggol.

Two other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing. His victims cannot be named due to a court gag order.

The court heard that after learning that each upskirt video could fetch around US$50 (S$69) to US$100 on some websites, Kuah felt it would be “thrilling and exciting” to take his own videos. It would also be another “source of income”, given his unstable earnings.

The freelancer even considered selling the videos to citizen journalism website STOMP for additional income.

On Aug 31 last year, at about 7.38pm, he came across his first victim, who was browsing some items in Daiso. He approached her from behind and used his mobile phone to take two videos of her, lasting almost two minutes in total.

A few minutes later, he approached his second victim from behind and then from the front. He took two upskirt videos of her, which lasted almost six minutes in total.

A member of the public subsequently alerted a security officer to Kuah’s actions after noticing what he did. At about 8.16pm, the officer called the police stating that Kuah had been detained in the mall's command centre for taking upskirt videos. 

Court documents revealed that two days earlier, sometime around 9.45pm, he had taken upskirt videos of two other women at Punggol MRT Station.

For each charge of intruding upon a woman’s privacy with the intent to insult her modesty, Kuah could have been jailed up to one year and/or fined.

In July, a taxi driver was sentenced to four-and-a-half months’ jail for taking more than 200 upskirt photos, many of which were also taken in a Daiso store in an unnamed shopping mall.

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