Lampert

Two twenty-something cell phone salesmen in Florida will be looking for work — and lawyers — after police say the two stole risqué pictures off a woman’s cell phone and then shared them with each other and at least one customer.

Officers arrested Gregory Lampert and are waiting for the other employee, Joshua Stuart, to return from vacation.

Authorities say Stuart offered to assist the Bartow-area woman with moving her photos and contacts from an old damaged cell phone to the one Verizon Wireless reseller Cellular Sales just sold her.

But investigators say Stuart ended up keeping the old phone and transferred copies of her pictures for himself. Unfortunately for the victim, a waitress at a nearby restaurant, several of the photos depicted her in various states of undress. Stuart allegedly shared what he called “the banging” pictures with at least one co-worker and a customer.

That customer happened to recognize the woman in the photographs and promptly told her. The victim filed a police report which launched the investigation by the Bartow Police.

Police later executed a search warrant at the Verizon store, seizing a laptop computer and two cell phones later found to contain pictures taken from the victim’s phone. Lampert later confessed he received copies of the images from Stuart and admitted to “stealing nude pictures” from another customer’s phone. Lampert is now charged with two felonies — dealing in stolen property and offenses against computer users and a misdemeanor count of theft.

Dhiman Bhattacharjee, owner of iPhone Repair of Lakeland told WFTS-TV customers should consider backing up and restoring data between phones on their own — a process made increasingly easy by cloud storage backup services offered by major wireless carriers.

“Whenever we transfer data, we always do it in front of our customers,” Bhattacharjee said. “A lot of times we’ll have a customer bring their own laptop or their PC or Mac and we’ll help them transfer or make a backup of their phone,” he said.

Another common sense tip: don’t take or record images on your phone you would be embarrassed about if others saw them. If you can’t help yourself, make sure to delete or move them before taking your device to a third party.

Verizon Wireless is reportedly very unhappy about the incident. The store in question is owned and operated by a third party reseller, and is not owned by Verizon outright. But Verizon’s name is prominently displayed inside and outside the store. Verizon told WFTS they intend to hold both the employees and the store accountable for violating customer privacy.

A spokesman for Cellular Sales of Knoxville, which runs the Bartow store, told the station they were extremely shocked by what happened and are “working like crazy to ensure it never happens again.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFTS Tampa Cell phone salesmen accused of stealing customers nude pictures 10-31-12.mp4[/flv]

WFTS in Tampa covers the story of what can happen to your personal photos when unscrupulous technicians decide to make copies and share them with others.  (2 minutes)