SLO gym owner facing new charges for filming partially dressed women

November 10, 2023

By KAREN VELIE

After the San Luis Obispo Police Department recovered previously deleted videos of women changing in the bathroom of CCC Fitness, the SLO County District Attorney’s Office filed new charges against the gym’s owner.

Prosecutors added two charges of concealing a spy camera to secretly videotape women “with the intent to arouse, appeal to, or gratify the lust, passions, or sexual desires of that person and invade the privacy of that other person.” The gym’s owner, Cole Corrigan, is now facing three felony and three misdemeanor charges.

In addition, prosecutors filed a motion to use California Evidence Code section 1108, which allows prosecutors to bring in evidence of a defendant’s past sexual misconduct. Corrigan has an extensive criminal history that includes stalking and peeping through a former classmate’s bedroom window.

On Aug. 29, a 22-year-old pregnant woman found a GoPro camera concealed in a white towel placed in a mop bucket in a woman’s restroom at CCC Fitness. Even though Corrigan asked Maria Lerno and her husband not to call law enforcement, they did.

An officer then went to the gym, took the camera and opened an investigation. Corrigan initially claimed the camera was not his. He later changed his story, saying he was trying to catch a thief and was only providing a live stream.

However, SLO police investigators were able to recover videos of two women changing in the bathroom of CCC Fitness from a computer they seized during a raid of Corrigan’s Morro Bay home, even though the videos had been previously deleted, Lerno said.

Last week, SLO police investigators asked Lerno to identify herself in a video. The video, which had been deleted and then recovered, was not from the day she found the GoPro camera.

“I had totally different clothes on,” Lerno told CalCoastNews. “You can see me pull my pants down. You can see my whole butt.”

During the raid of Corrigan’s home, officers also found an untraceable firearm, ammunition and testosterone.

Corrigan is charged with felony counts for being a felon in possession of a firearm, being a felon in possession of 60 rounds of ammunition and for possession of an untraceable gun. He is also facing two misdemeanor counts for secretly videotaping partially dressed women and a misdemeanor charge for possession of testosterone.