By Nina Golgowski

PUBLISHED: 00:58 EST, 22 July 2012 | UPDATED: 01:23 EST, 22 July 2012


A mother who went to have her cell phone fixed at Best Buy has spoken of her fury after a male employee copied racy photos of her to a CD before later inviting her to his home to collect them.

Last April, Sophia Ellison hired a Geek Squad employee in Fairfax, Virginia to transfer hundreds of photos, numbers and contacts to a newly purchased iPhone for her.

Instead, he copied them on to his own computer and demanded that she see him in person if she wanted to get them back.

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Exposed: Sophia Ellison has hired an attorney after she says a Best Buy Geek Squad employee stole racy photos of her off her iPhone after hiring him to transfer her pictures

Exposed: Sophia Ellison has hired an attorney after she says a Best Buy Geek Squad employee stole racy photos of her off her iPhone after hiring him to transfer her pictures

'I felt sick. I felt violated. I felt so embarrassed,' Ms Ellison told WTOP after claiming the man had stolen her pictures.

Originally approaching the employee to get the cracked screen on her iPhone replaced before being told she was eligible for an upgrade, the employee identified only as George offered to buy her old iPhone off her for $60 out of pocket.

'I said OK but everything will be wiped clean? And he said yeah, everything will be gone. And I said OK,' she said.

When he returned to the counter an hour later, he allegedly told her that he had wiped everything clean from her old phone and handed her the cash for it straight from his wallet.

Flipping through her new phone, all her contacts were there.

Apology: The company has since fired an employee for making a personal transaction with a customer at the Virginia store, according to a released statement, and apologized to the woman

Apology: The company has since fired an employee for making a personal transaction with a customer at the Virginia store, according to a released statement, and apologized to the woman

'I just assumed that all my pictures were going to be there too,' she said.

It was a day later she realized all 900 of them, as well as some videos, were missing.

'I'm a woman. I love to model. I'm not a model, but I love to model. I have some pretty racy photos of myself, for me,' she said.

'I'm a woman. I love to model. I'm not a model, but I love to model. I have some pretty racy photos of myself, for me,'

                                        - Sophia Ellison

Adding to her horror, she says there was also a video on her phone recorded by her younger children - at the time without her knowledge she says - of them getting out of the shower.

'I freaked out and I called them, freaked out,' she said.

Asking to speak with a manager, a Geek Squad employee told her that there was not one available that day but after hearing her story and saying he had her information, they promised to have one of them call her back at their return.

When someone did call, however, she says it was the employee named George telling her to calm down and that he'd work on retrieving the photos for her himself.

All included: After purchasing a new iPhone the employee allegedly bought her old one off her, out of his own pocket, while promising to delete all her photos which he did not do

All included: After purchasing a new iPhone the employee allegedly bought her old one off her, out of his own pocket, while promising to delete all her photos which he did not do

'A few days later,' she recalled to WTOP in the office of her newly hired attorney, 'he called back to tell me he'd made a CD at his house with all my photos, and when can I come get them. I could pick them up at his house.

'And then that's when I literally felt sick. I hung up the phone and felt exposed.'

Ms Ellison's attorney is currently considering filing a civil suit on her behalf and she plans to involve the police.

Responding to her allegations, Best Buy provided WTOP with the following statement:

'First and foremost, we apologize to this customer for an unfortunate experience caused by what appears to be rogue action against our code of conduct, specifically related to our trade-in program. We hope to restore her trust.

'We can confirm that an employee at this store has been terminated for making a personal transaction with a customer while on duty at the store. We're continuing our investigation and assure you that we will continue to act promptly to address any inappropriate employee behavior.'

The employee’s firing has done little to comfort Ms Ellison, however.

‘Every day I have to think about, “Hmm, I wonder where my face, where my body, where my children, where my memories are in this technology world,” and I can only imagine,' she said.

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Here's what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.

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Stupid woman!

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At least she'll be able to console herself with the huge cash settlement that Geek Squad and Best Buy are going to pay to settle this case before it goes before a jury of 12 cell-phone owners. I also hope that Ms. Ellison has a large, prone-to-violence boyfriend who will go over to this individual's abode and pick up the CD while he picks up his front teeth and the remains of his smashed computer.

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If you remember nothing else, remember this: in this technological age in which we live, privacy is now just a word in the dictionary and a throwback to the past. There is no such thing as privacy.

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My bad! It's 2012. Why on earth would I expect a person to take the responsibility and spend the effort to learn how to protect themselves when if something goes wrong, all they have to do is find the nearest lawyer and sue the person with the deepest pockets. If the version published by the DM is correct, then the tech was despicable, but it's YOUR data, it's YOUR life and YOU should learn how to protect YOURSELF from creeps like that!

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I'd be willing to gamble that at least some of these racey photos were already uploaded to facebook by the 'victim' herself. You can't fix stupid.

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And why would she keep pictures of herself in "racy" poses if she has children in her home? She is so in love with herself she wants her children to see her??? This woman is not too smart. She made a lot of not wise choices. And why is he lawyer allowing this to be in the news??? Oh I forgot... More attention for her. SMH!!!

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It boggles the mind that people first think taking naked pictures of themselves is a good idea, and that they keep them on their phones! Absurd, stupid woman. What if she had left her damn phone on the bus? would she be suing the bus company? Idiot.

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Uh yes Wil; Ashport, TN it is creepy he asked her to go to his house to get the CD. It is also stupid of her to save the pictures and videos on her phone. It uses up memory and what type of person takes racy pictures of themselves and sit around looking at the??? I have never heard of anyone selling their phone to an employee of the store you go to to purchase a phone and why didn't she check the phone for the pictures before she left the store if they were so precious to her? When was the last time she synched her phone? This whole story is stupid and crazy.

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As Marshall Cypress, somewhere out there>, 22/7/2012 15:59 says - the first thing that the IT people will do for a computer or phone is to download and look at/look for racy pictures. What Marshall does not say is that it does not stop there. The IT people will run an 'undelete' program on the hard drives and solid state memory and will see EVERY photo you have ever taken unless the space has been overwritten or wiped using a commercial total delete program, Those SD cards from your phone or camera where you have deleted the content - still have that content there it is EASY to bring back the deleted photos. Remember it could be banking information, your credit card numbers and pins all sorts of email. It doesn't matter what the managers say - the IT staff will always look into the PCs phones and cameras in for repair, Do NOT give memory or disks to any repair shop if you have ever put information or photos on them that you don't want them to have.

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I'm a computer repair tech. I tell people all the time Not to keep private photos and videos on their phone or computer. Save them to an external hard drive or a flash drive. I can't tell you how many times that I've had to recover a computer that was unbootable. They can't get into them, but I can. I have to look at the pictures and documents to see if the recovery was successful.

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