NOVEMBER 1--An employee at a Verizon Wireless store in Florida illegally copied naked photos contained on the phone of a female customer and then shared the images with a fellow male employee, according to police who yesterday hit the duo with felony charges.

Cops learned of the photo heist when one of the employees last month showed the explicit photos to a male customer who happened to know the woman and alerted her to what had transpired at the business.

The woman told cops that she had gone to the Verizon outlet in Bartow to replace a damaged phone. While there, worker Joshua Stuart, 24, provided her with a new phone and “assisted her with the transfer of data” from her old device, according to an arrest report.

The victim, a waitress at a restaurant near the Verizon outlet, told investigators she “was under the impression the data would be transferred to the new telephone and erased from the old device.”

On October 18, a male acquaintance of the woman went to the store to upgrade his phone. The witness told cops that he was being helped by Stuart when the employee asked if he knew any of the bartenders or waitresses at the neighboring restaurant. Stuart then explained that a waitress had recently been in the store and “left ‘banging’ pictures on her telephone.”

After initially trying to locate the images on a desktop computer, Stuart asked coworker Gregory Lampert, 26, for his phone. Stuart then handed the witness the phone, which contained “numerous pictures of a female in various stages of undress.” The man recognized the woman in the 20 or so photos, but left the store without mentioning it to Stuart or Lampert.

In a subsequent interview with Bartow Police Department officers, the woman reported that the photos were “very private in nature and several depict her nude breasts and vagina.”

When cops later executed a search warrant at the Verizon location, they seized Lampert’s laptop computer and two cell phones. An examination of the devices “revealed pictures taken from the victim’s telephone.”

During questioning, Lampert confessed that he received copies of the stolen photos from Stuart. He also copped to “stealing nude pictures” from a second client’s phone. Lampert, pictured in the above mug shot, was arrested and charged with dealing in stolen property and offenses against computer users, both felonies. He is also facing a misdemeanor theft count.

Now out of state, Stuart is expected to be arrested early next week upon his return to Florida. (3 pages)