A 39-year-old man from Vancouver Island has been sentenced in what is believed to be the most prolific case of voyeurism ever prosecuted in Canada, according to the Saanich Police Department.
Police said investigators identified 652 individual women and girls as victims in this case.
On Thursday, Yin Yeung Derek Chan was sentenced to 54 months in prison. With credit for time served of 713 days of pre-sentenced custody, the remaining time to serve is 935 days, or approximately 31 months, the BC Prosecution Service confirmed.
In early 2024, a detective with the Saanich Police Special Investigation Section was made aware of voyeuristic photos and videos being uploaded to a popular image-based social media site from somewhere in Saanich.
On Jan. 16, 2024, the special investigative section, along with the British Columbia Integrated Child Exploitation Unit, began to investigate.
That led detectives to identify Chan as a suspect. Police said Chan had previously been convicted of voyeurism after being caught filming a woman in a mall change room in the Victoria area.
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Chan was arrested on April 11, 2024, at his Saanich home.
Police said that during the arrest, detectives seized devices containing thousands of images and more than 28 hours of “offending video” that were recorded between April 1, 2017, and Nov. 30, 2023, without the knowledge or consent of women and girls inside businesses, at beaches and sometimes through the windows of private homes.
Chan had also been posting the images online, detectives found, and many of those images were shared on websites around the world.
Formal requests were made to have them removed.
Chan was released with conditions following his initial arrest in April 2024 and was rearrested on Jan. 30, 2025. He was detained by the court and has remained in custody since then, police added in a release.
On Oct. 1, 2025, he pleaded guilty to several criminal offences related to voyeurism, including surreptitiously recording people in a place where they reasonably expect privacy, observing and recording for a sexual purpose, making child pornography, publishing a recording that was obtained in the commission of a crime and breaching three separate conditions, two of which related to his previous conviction.
Detectives were able to formally identify and contact 40 victims, some of whom delivered victim impact statements.
Anyone who believes they may be one of the hundreds of unidentified victims is asked to email: file950@saanichpolice.ca.
Greater Victoria Victim Services is available to assist any of the victims in the case.
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