Jealous IT expert who used ‘smart’ home alarm system to spy on wife
‘Have you got a bug in the house?’
A JEALOUS businessman spied on his estranged wife by secretly logging into the nerve centre of their £ 1million ‘ smart’ home, a court heard.
In what is thought to be the first case of its kind, electronics expert Ross Cairns, 35, eavesdropped on his wife Catherine and monitored her movements after he moved out of their house.
Cairns used the camera and microphone of a wall-mounted touchscreen designed to allow them to monitor alarm and heating systems while they were out.
On one occasion, after accountant Mrs Cairns, 33, told her mother: ‘I don’t love him any more,’ her husband of 16 years arrived unannounced and repeated her words back to her.
He also hacked into her accounts on Facebook and the dating app Bumble, sending an intimate picture and obscene messages to men she had been chatting with online, Manchester magistrates’ court heard.
Cairns, who runs a firm installing security and home cinema systems, was convicted of stalking offences and using threatening behaviour. The Cairnses, who have two daughters aged five and three, fitted an ELAN system in their £1million fivebedroom house in upmarket Hale, near Manchester.
Costing up to £100,000, the system connects TVs, lighting, central heating and alarms – allowing them to be controlled either by the touchscreen or, if the user is away from the house, via a mobile phone app.
The court heard the system let users see and listen to what was going on in the house. Cairns made himself the administrator of the system and continued logging in after the couple split in 2016 and he moved in with his mother in nearby Altrincham.
His wife told the hearing she had asked him to visit the house last August because a fish tank had overflowed.
She said: ‘We were still friends and I also wanted him to have a look at the security system, so I gave him my phone.
‘But when he was on it, he read messages I had sent to a man I had been on a date with.
‘He was upset and he stormed out of the house.’ Mrs Cairns said he returned, crying, then became angry again and grabbed her phone and fetched her wedding rings from upstairs, saying that she ‘wouldn’t need them’.
He left and Mrs Cairns’ parents came round to discuss his outburst. She said: ‘We were stood right next to the ELAN system and at the time Ross was at home at his mother’s house. I told my mum that I don’t love him any more.’
After her parents left, her husband arrived. Mrs Cairns said: ‘He repeated the conversation that I had with my mum. He said, “Oh, you don’t love me any more”.’ The next day she asked him how he knew what she’d told her mother, saying: ‘Have you got a bug in the house?’
Mrs Cairns said: ‘He said his laptop was in the hall and he had heard it through that – but I knew it was not in the hallway. He then admitted he had logged into the alarm system and listened and apologised.’
She switched off a camera facility and brought in an engineer to change the password so Cairns could not access the system – but he still logged in remotely.
The court was shown evidence a device called ‘ Ross iPhone’ signed into the system on August 12, the date on which he was called to fix the fish tank.
Neil White, prosecuting, said: ‘He has been accessing the system when they were living separately and listened in on conversations. We submit that hacking into her phone to send messages, and listening in on conversations, is stalking.’
Cairns denied wrongdoing, claiming he accessed the system only to change the lights or adjust the volumes on the TV.
But chairman of the bench Barbara Kenyon said Mrs Cairns had given ‘ clear evidence’. He will be sentenced next month.