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Upper East Sider Slapped With Community Service for Taping Sex Partners: DA

By Shaye Weaver | August 31, 2016 3:57pm
 John Kelly pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted unlawful surveillance of two women he was having sex with and was sentenced to 10 days of community service, according to authorities.
John Kelly pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted unlawful surveillance of two women he was having sex with and was sentenced to 10 days of community service, according to authorities.
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Shutterstock/Andrei Kuzmik

MANHATTAN — An Upper East Sider was slapped with 10 days of community service after pleading guilty to charges that he secretly filmed women he had sex with, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

John Kelly, 35 — a former wealth manager for Morgan Stanley, according to reports — was arrested in November 2013 after three women accused him of video taping them while they were having sex during a period between 2011 and 2012, according to the DA.

Kelly's attorney had originally argued that the camera used to record the sex tapes was actually a monitor for his dog that happened to be recording when he had the women in his bedroom, reports say.

But the women say they were unaware they were being recorded and it was a breach of their privacy. And Kelly had saved the videos and labeled them with demeaning names, according to the DA's office.

Kelly pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of attempted unlawful surveillance, misdemeanors. He was sentenced to 10 days of community service and had to agree not to post or show any of the images and to adhere to orders of protection against him regarding two of the women, a spokeswoman for the DA said.

The plea deal was agreed to by both sides, considering Kelly's lack of a criminal history and the fact that a trial would mean putting the videos on display, according to the DA's office.

The Assistant District Attorney said in court, however, that no sentence will ever make up for the violation of these women's privacy, and that it is the hoped that Kelly has come to learn that what he did was unacceptable and criminal, according to the DA spokeswoman.

Kelly's attorney, Sarita Kedia, said she was able to show that there were "substantial problems relating to the integrity of the evidence and the credibility of the complaints."

"On Mr. Kelly’s end, he felt it best to end this saga with this misdemeanor plea so that he could move on with his life without putting his family through the emotional toll of a trial," she said. "They have suffered enough over the last three years with all the unfair and one-sided publicity."