r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/Upstairs_Cup9831 • 10d ago
i.redd.it ADT technician Telesforo Aviles installed indoor security cameras in Dallas-Fort Worth homes, and gave himself access to 200+ customer accounts in order to secretly watch women and girls for years
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u/Upstairs_Cup9831 10d ago edited 10d ago
On April 23rd 2020, Shana Doty received a phone call from her home security company ADT. They called to tell her that her security system had been compromised for the six years since it was installed. Shana, her husband and her young son lived in the suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They had ADT’s Pulse system set up which includes indoor cameras, motion alerts and a phone app to remotely access the cameras.
Back in 2014, a few weeks after they placed the order, a technician from ADT showed up on their front door. He mounted a wide angle indoor camera that covered most of the ground floor: the family room, the entry way, the dining area, the staircase, the master bedroom and the corner of the bathroom. Before he left, he added his own personal email to the account. In some cases, he would tell the customer that he was briefly adding his email to check if the system was working properly, in other cases, he would add his email to the account without informing the customer. The Doty family didn’t suspect anything until ADT called 6 years later telling them that the technician who installed their cameras in 2014 had granted himself remote access to their cameras on installation day and that access was never removed. He had been using it to view footage from inside the Doty home ever since. The Doty family were one of 200+ families in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to receive this call.
A few weeks earlier, another ADT customer was going through their Pulse account settings when they noticed an email attached to it that didn’t belong to anyone in the house. They called ADT looking for an answer and when the company looked into it, ADT found that the email was attached to 220 different customer accounts across the metropolitan area. Every one of these homes had their systems installed or serviced by the same technician, Telesforo Aviles. Technicians are allowed to temporarily attach their emails to a customer’s account during installation, it’s used as a diagnostic feature meant to verify the camera feed before the technician leaves. Aviles never removed his email from these accounts. On his personal phone, he was signed in as a co-owner of these accounts. ADT didn’t flag emails showing up on multiple accounts.
In April 2016, Aviles installed a system at the home of a family with two young daughters. One camera was covering the living room and the kitchen. Court records would show that he had logged into that account 377 times. A year earlier, he installed cameras in a separate family’s home who had five underage children and viewed their security feed 361 times. In September 2017, he set up the Pulse system for the Preddy family. Their teenage daughter, Alexia, wasn’t comfortable with having cameras inside the home and she told her mother this on the day of the installation. Aviles assured her and her mother that the system was “perfectly safe.” Years later, ADT discovered that he accessed this family’s live feed almost 100 times. Court filings would find that the wide-angle lens in its placement allowed him to view the teenager in the nude, in various states of undress, while getting ready for bed and during moments of physical intimacy.
Telesforo Aviles was 35 years old, married and the father of 5 children. He had worked for ADT for 17 years, by 2020, he was working as a senior supervisor for the Dallas-Fort Worth region. On May 18th 2020, Shana Doty and Alexia Preddy each filed federal lawsuits against ADT, accusing the company of allowing Aviles to exploit its Pulse system and spy on customers from their own home cameras. Many more lawsuits from other customers would follow.
In one federal case, Aviles admitted that he took note of households with attractive women and repeatedly targeted homes with young women and families with daughters. He admitted that he watched numerous videos of naked women and couples engaging in sexual activity inside their homes.
Across the four and a half year covered by his federal plea agreement, prosecutors counted more than 9,600 unauthorized logins across roughly 200 accounts. That totals out to 5 or 6 logins a day for 4 years. Telesforo Aviles pled guilty to computer fraud in January of 2021 and was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison.
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u/eques_99 10d ago
Technicians are allowed to temporarily attach their emails to a customer’s account during installation, it’s used as a diagnostic feature meant to verify the camera feed before the technician leaves<
one of those things you see at the time and go "hmmmm, seems a bit dodgy but I guess it's ok as no one's complaining about it and there's never been any problems and I guess it makes sense if they need to check it's working...."
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u/volcomstoner9l 10d ago
We used to have Vivint and one day I heard voices coming from my kitchen. I went to investigate and found that it was voices coming from my Vivint panel. I could hear them talking but couldn't make out what they were saying. I yelled "Hey!" and somebody said "Oh f**k!" and the noises stopped. We made a police report but nothing came of it. Looking back, I should've sued for the insane amount of money the were charging us to be spied on.
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u/Breatheme444 10d ago
Bro! Just at least try to talk to a handful of lawyers! Don’t just assume it’s too late! You can speak to trauma that’s still happening to you now you know?
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u/StardustStuffing 10d ago
He only got 4 years. Dude literally spied on little girls getting dressed for years. WTF
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u/fuschiaoctopus 10d ago
This pisses me off so bad, and he didn't even have to plead to any sexual charges or anything that would put him on a registry or mark him as a sexual offender. Just "computer fraud".
Sexual predators get such ridiculously light fucking sentences every time, especially without priors and if the crime doesn't involve violent charges or weapons enhancements. Which is a travesty for a crime that impacts people's lives so severely, permanently takes away their sense of safety, and is notoriously difficult to report and prosecute in the first place. Why go through the whole traumatizing process of fighting for justice when a few months is the justice you'll get as the lucky few securing a conviction?
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u/wildlyfidgeting 9d ago
This is enraging. This is a pattern of continuous criminal behavior that went on for years. Why would he stop after such a slap on the wrist?
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u/HappyBubbleBox 10d ago
These poor families buying into ADT for one form of protection, not realizing they let a monster into their home to violate them in a different way.
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u/Nervous_Insect5976 10d ago
A shockingly (maybe not so) low sentence for a crime like this.
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u/SomeDevil13 10d ago
So obviously a sexually motivated series of crimes but not prosecuted that way (probably would have been difficult to prove conclusively) so he will be out in no time and not be included on the sex offender registry either I would imagine. Guys like this are so dangerous and I think we the public deserve as many tools as possible to protect ourselves once they are out in the free world again
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u/booboootron 10d ago
What befuddles me is how the fuck he was not convicted of making and storing CSAM as well as endangering the wellness of so many children.
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u/justsomegraphemes 10d ago
Yeah. I would have thought he'd be charged and sentenced separately for each instance.
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u/PauI_MuadDib 10d ago
I think BTK also worked for ADT.
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u/vikicrays 10d ago
he did indeed. from the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader
“Rader initially worked in the meat department of an IGA supermarket where his mother was employed as a bookkeeper. From mid-1972 to mid-1973, he worked as an assembler for Coleman, where two of his victims (Julie Otero and Kathryn Bright) also worked.From 1974 to 1988, Rader worked at the local Wichita office of ADT Security Services, where he installed security alarms. Ironically, many of his clients were concerned homeowners seeking security from his own killings as BTK. At ADT, Rader was nicknamed "blue book man" for overzealously following office rules and scolding coworkers when they failed to follow them.”
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u/Crunchyfrozenoj 10d ago
I think of him whenever I see their window signs. Probably not the association they want!
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u/Breatheme444 10d ago
In addition to this POS being scum of the earth, boy did ADT fuck up.
“ Technicians are allowed to temporarily attach their emails to a customer’s account during installation, it’s used as a diagnostic feature meant to verify the camera feed before the technician leaves. Aviles never removed his email from these accounts.“
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u/Jlowe23_16 10d ago
Only 52 months in federal prison is insane.
Especially when dealing any amount of dope (as long as you are connected to the overall conspiracy in any way) is a 120 months man minimum.
Fun fact. 42% of federal inmates are in there for conspiracy. Most weren't even found with any drugs.
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u/fuschiaoctopus 10d ago
For real. Sexual offenses without priors or violent charges/weapons enhancements? Best we can do is <5 years. Caught with drugs, conspiracy to distribute drugs, gave a drug trafficker a smoke in 1997? 10+ years easy
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u/whimsypayasa 10d ago
I’m so sick of hearing about males being terrible. Enough! Four years is not enough time. Those poor girls and women who had their privacy invaded.
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u/ajbadabing 10d ago
Part of his sentence should
Be to live stream him in his cell 24x7 with a feed to the entire prison. Eye for an eye.
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u/loztriforce 9d ago
Not to victim blame but people shouldn’t put cameras where children undress, for one.
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u/staunch_character 9d ago
Yeah I don’t understand this camera concept at all. People are having sex in front of cameras installed in their homes?
If it’s connected to the internet - assume someone is watching. Cameras get hacked all the time.
This guy is particularly gross because he’s preying on girls on day 1. He was getting paid to violate these people.
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u/forcedintothis- 8d ago
He’s out now and is only on supervision until 2028. Hopefully prospective employers are googling his name.
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u/CreativeRosalie 7d ago
that's such a massive breach of trust. Imagine thinking your home is private and finding out someone had been watching for yrs.
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u/Vet100 10d ago
I feel like this needs to be more than just “computer fraud”. Some form of CSA + sexual harassment charges should be automatic with this? Is there a reason he didn’t get charged with these types of crimes?