Six months in jail, five years on probation, and banned from Walmart.
That’s the sentence given to a Columbus man who pleaded guilty to aiming a cellphone camera under a female shopper’s skirt to record images of her undergarments.
And he’s not banned only from the 6457 Gateway Road Walmart where he got caught. He’s banned from all Walmarts.
Ray Faisal Lateef, as he is named in his indictment, or Lateef Ray, as he’s named on the Muscogee County Jail log, currently is serving his time, having reported to jail Jan. 6.
The 38-year-old pleaded guilty to violating a Georgia law against using a recording device surreptitiously to photograph anyone “underneath or through such individual’s clothing, for the purpose of viewing the intimate parts of the body or the undergarments worn by such individual.”
The crime is punishable by one to five years in prison.
Judge Arthur Smith III sentenced Lateef to five years with six months to serve and the rest on probation.
Investigators said about 5:30 p.m. on May 17, 2018, Lateef aroused suspicion when he touched a woman on the back as she was shopping and claimed he had brushed a spider off her. The woman alerted store security, which reviewed the Walmart’s surveillance video to see what he was doing.
The footage showed Lateef with a cellphone in his hand as he walked into the aisle where the woman was shopping and put the phone on the floor underneath her skirt. She then stepped on the device, prompting Lateef to claim he had dropped it.
When questioned by police, Lateef at first tried his spider alibi, but later admitted he was using his cellphone, an officer testified during Lateef’s preliminary hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court.
