German Court Case Exposes Telegram Network That Drugged and Filmed Women in Secret
A phone call from police told a Chinese student in Germany that her ex-boyfriend had taken nude photos of her while she slept. She was one of many victims of an organised online group.
Key points
- German prosecutors identified a Telegram group whose members coordinated the drugging and secret filming of women, targeting mainly women of Chinese heritage.
- A woman named Ivy, 27, discovered she had been secretly photographed while unconscious by her former boyfriend, identified in court documents as Tong Z.
- Police approached Ivy in early 2024 after investigating Tong Z for sexual assault and covert photography.
- Victims had no knowledge they had been filmed until law enforcement made contact.
Early last year, Ivy got a phone call she almost ignored. The caller said he was a police officer. She assumed it was a scam.
It wasn't.
The officer told Ivy, a Chinese student living in Germany, that her former boyfriend, identified in German court documents as Tong Z, was under investigation for sexual assault and secret photography. Police then showed her nude images of herself, taken while she slept. She recognised herself. No memory accompanied those moments.
Ivy is 27 now, one of a number of women, mostly of Chinese heritage, identified as victims of an organised Telegram group whose members shared images and methods for drugging women without their knowledge.
How did this group operate without being caught sooner?
The group used Telegram because its encrypted private channels are hard for outside parties to monitor. Members didn't just share images: according to reporting first published by The Guardian, they shared advice, reinforced one another's tactics, and coordinated in targeting victims. That network structure is precisely what made prosecution viable once investigators got inside it, because digital records inside private group chats can become court evidence.
Telegram's detectability problem isn't new to this case. Our July reporting on India's legal challenge over exam-leak channels showed how the platform's architecture makes proactive monitoring difficult even when authorities are looking.
Should you worry about this?
Covert photography, meaning recording someone without consent, is a criminal offence across most European jurisdictions and covered directly by Germany's criminal code. Victims typically don't learn it happened until police tell them.
If you've left a relationship and someone contacts you claiming to be law enforcement, don't dismiss the call. Verify it by calling your local police station's published number.
For organisations supporting international student or diaspora communities, this case is a reminder that image-based abuse is a live safeguarding concern. Our earlier story on Tasmania becoming the last Australian state to ban non-consensual sharing of intimate images shows how recently some jurisdictions have moved to close these legal gaps.
Proceedings in Germany are continuing. The case that matters most here isn't the technology: it's that a structured criminal network ran inside an encrypted app for long enough to reach multiple victims before a single one knew. Prosecutors are now working through what evidence collection looks like when coordination lives entirely inside private channels, and the answer will shape how similar cases are built across Europe.
