Eric Tran Thai, Child Pornography, Massachusetts 2021

A Boston man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for surreptitiously filming boys in the restrooms at Boston Latin School.

Eric Tran Thai, 39, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William G. Young to 12 years in prison and five years of supervised release.

Thai pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography on Jan. 12, 2021.

The investigation began on Feb. 6 and Feb. 27, 2018, when two separate Boston College students reported to the police that they had been videotaped without their knowledge or consent while using the men’s restrooms on the Boston College campus.

Following the Feb. 27, 2018, report, police located and spoke with Thai on campus. Thai was placed under arrest on state charges related to his surreptitious recording of the students and his bag was subsequently searched; in it, police found several covert camera devices, including faux smoke detectors, a water bottle containing a small cube recording device and a pair of sunglasses outfitted with a built-in camera.

The state charges related to those offenses are currently pending in Middlesex County Superior Court.

Following Thai’s arrest, a search of his home was executed where dozens of devices including computer hard drives, thumb drives, covert and regular cameras, computers, iPads, cell phones and multiple SD and Sim cards were recovered.

Investigators found several electronic folders labeled BU, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Bunker Hill, Boston Latin High School, and several different malls, airports and foreign country locations.

Thai was charged federally for the child pornography located in the Boston Latin folders, which contained approximately 45 surreptitiously-recorded videos of male students in various states of dress using the urinals and stalls in the boys’ bathroom.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/boston-man-sentenced-12-years-prison-child-pornography-charges