Cop Swiped X-Rated Images Off Perp's Phone

NOVEMBER 29--A Connecticut man whose phone was confiscated by police after his arrest alleges that a Stamford cop forwarded sexually explicit videos and photos stored on the device to his own personal phone and then distributed the X-rated material to “one or more third parties,” according to a federal lawsuit.

William Vasilakos, 39, charges that the police officer, Michael Presti, arrested him in August 2008 and, rather than place the phone “in the custody of the Stamford Police Department,” he “kept the phone on his own person.”

The phone incident triggered an internal affairs unit probe of Presti. That review substantiated the allegations against the cop, who was subsequently disciplined, according to IAU Sergeant Ryan Devanney. Details of the punishment levied against Presti, Devanney noted, would have to be obtained via a public records request filed with the City of Stamford’s Law Department.

Presti, who works the midnight tour, could not be reached for comment.

At the time of his misdemeanor breach of peace bust, Vasilakos, a bouncer, was dating Maria Saltsides, 30, and the couple had “consensually memorialized their love and affection for one another by recording a series of sexually explicit videos and pictures on a cell phone belonging to Mr. Vasilakos,” according to a U.S. District Court complaint filed last week.

The complaint, which names Presti as its sole defendant, was filed by Vasilakos and Saltsides, who are no longer dating, according to their lawyer. Vasilakos is pictured at right.

The pair alleges that “while unlawfully in possession” of Vasilakos’s phone, Presti used it to send a series of videos and photos to his own phone. “These emails consisted of text messages, pictures and videos of an explicitly sexual nature involving the consensual conduct of the plaintiffs,” lawyer Norman Pattis reported.

Pattis, who described his clients as “stunningly good-looking,” told TSG that, upon Vasilakos’s release from custody, he reviewed his phone’s call history and realized that six text messages and eight e-mails had been sent from the phone while he was jailed. The explicit material from the device had been forwarded to a phone number and a Hotmail address Vasilakos did not recognize, reported Pattis.

The lawyer said that a subsequent investigation determined that the phone number and e-mail address belonged to Presti, who allegedly “published sexually explicit images to one or more third parties,” the complaint alleges.

The Vasilakos/Saltsides lawsuit, which does not specify monetary damages, claims that the plaintiffs “suffered an invasion of privacy, humiliation and emotional distress” as a result of Presti’s activities. (3 pages)