Ex-engineer jailed 33 weeks for taking more than 200 upskirt, changing-room videos

SINGAPORE — He took 211 videos mostly up women’s skirts, as well as in changing rooms at the 313@Somerset, Bugis+ and Junction 8 shopping malls.

Lincoln Tshe Kwok Ming committed these offences over about two years from February 2016, before a victim’s friend finally caught him in the act in November 2017.

Tshe admitted to taking upskirt videos since 2011, storing most of the older videos in a computer in his storeroom and keeping the newer ones in his study room computer. He also kept copies of the newer videos in his hard disk.

The older videos were not the subject of charges dealt with in court. It was not stated in court documents how he filmed his victims in the changing rooms.

The 36-year-old unemployed man was sentenced to 33 weeks’ jail — or about eight months behind bars — on Friday (Oct 4). None of his victims can be named due to a court order to protect their identities.

The former engineer pleaded guilty last month to 10 counts of insulting a woman’s modesty. Another 201 such charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.

The court previously heard that when he was finally nabbed on Nov 29, 2017, he had been taking an upskirt video at 313@Somerset mall on his mobile phone while standing on the escalator behind a woman and her friend. He had positioned his Samsung phone on his thigh with the camera lens facing upwards.

The victim’s friend confronted Tshe over the video and asked to look at his phone, before finding the footage there. The police were alerted and arrested Tshe.

Last month, Tshe’s lawyers said in mitigation that he suffered from paraphilic disorder — which involves recurrent sexual urges or behaviour — and persistent depressive disorder. They sought 12 weeks’ jail, while Deputy Public Prosecutor Kwang Jia Min asked for nine months’ jail given the number of videos he took.

For each charge of insulting a woman’s modesty, he could have been jailed for up to one year, or fined, or both.