DENVER – A worker with the Colorado Department of Education faces 40 charges that include felony sexual assault and stalking after allegedly taking upskirt and other secret photos of more than two-dozen of his coworkers and other women.
Thanh Tan Ta, 43, was charged in November with 20 additional counts after he was charged in October with 20 counts initially.
Ta faces one count of sexual assault; seven counts of felony stalking; 18 counts of invasion of privacy for sexual gratification; 13 counts of criminal attempt to commit invasion of privacy for sexual gratification; and one count of misdemeanor computer crime.
According to an arrest affidavit, the Department of Education’s information security officer was first alerted to a security issue stemming from pornography contained on an external hard drive that Ta had attached to his work computer.
Managers ordered Ta to go home and retrieve the hard drive, which the affidavit says took several hours.
IT experts reviewed Ta’s hard drive, and found multiple files and folders with employees’ names that contained “upskirt” images of the women, some photos taken down their shirts, and others that were taken at either Ta’s home or other places in the Denver area.
In all, the affidavit said, there were 26 current and former Department of Education employees who had explicit photos of themselves taken, allegedly by Ta. The affidavit says the photos were taken between 2011 and 2017.
The affidavit says there were “approximately 250,000 files on this external hard drive which contain mostly pornographic material.”
Some of the women say they knew Ta, but were unaware he had been taking photos of them. Others interviewed by police said they did not know him. All were upset that they had photos taken without their permission, according to the affidavit, and one had to leave work for the day because she was so upset.
Ta is being held on a $500,000 bond, according to court records.
