Bemidji man accused of taking hundreds of lewd photos of girls

Lewd photos of children at volleyball games, in stores and at restaurants around Bemidji make up a growing log of evidence against a Bemidji man accused of stalking and harassing girls.

Adam Joseph Skoog, 42, who remains in custody, is charged with 15 felony and gross misdemeanor counts in three different cases filed in Beltrami County District Court. The most recent case, filed Dec. 29, mirrors a case filed in November alleging that Skoog took hundreds of lewd photos at a middle school volleyball game, which the Beltrami County Attorney says is a disturbing pattern.

“It’s definitely incredibly creepy behavior,” County Attorney David Hanson said. “We wanted to get something out there as quickly as possible so that we can start notifying the public of this guy because it’s so pervasive.”

Skoog’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In earlier court filings, attorney Tyler James Martin-O’Rourke asked the judge to dismiss charges because his client’s “alleged conduct does not constitute ‘stalking’ or ‘harassment’ as described by the statutes charged,” according to court records.

Charges say that investigators with the Bemidji Police Department and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) learned that Skoog was traveling around the city and state “taking hundreds of surreptitious photographs of young females, specifically the clothing covering their buttocks and genitals.”

“It was apparent that the females did not know they were being photographed,” charges say.

Skoog is a married father and senior engineer at Omnicom Production. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions about the charges.

Prosecutors charged him Nov. 5 with three felony counts for the Walmart incident, including two counts of stalking a victim under the age of 18 and a gross misdemeanor charge of interfering with the privacy of a minor.

On Dec. 18, prosecutors filed six more of the same charges against Skoog for an incident at a seventh-grade volleyball game at Bemidji Middle School against Thief River Falls on Sept. 30.

A detective found on Skoog’s phone over 100 photographs of young girls and women at the game, “with focus on the clothing covering their genitals and buttocks as well as their bare legs,” charges say. He went on to photograph a young female working at Qdoba that evening.

Eight children and a mother were identified in the photos.

On Dec. 29, Skoog was charged with another half-dozen charges of harassment, stalking and interfering with privacy for taking photos at a different seventh-grade volleyball game at the middle school against Park Rapids.