TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A trail of digital evidence from two separate computer crime investigations converged at the home of a Michigan man who police say maintained a blog featuring covertly-recorded videos of women in department stores and extorted nude photographs from another woman on social media.

A police report states officers with Traverse City police and Michigan State Police executed a search warrant on the home of Jesus Ricardo Rodriguez-Maturino in July.

Rodriguez-Maturino’s name and address surfaced during an investigation that started when a 21-year-old Traverse City woman reported that she received a social media message from someone she didn’t know, according to the police report. The message claimed a third party had obtained nude photographs the woman took of herself and threatened to send them to her friends and family unless she provided more.

The victim believed the third party and the would-be extortionist were the same person — a suspicion shared by investigators.

Smith said the extortion attempt occurred at about the same time another man contacted state police to report a Tumblr blog featuring multiple so-called “upskirt” videos taken of women in Traverse City department stores. The man said he had an idea who created the blog, but couldn’t confirm it was Rodriguez-Maturino.

It wasn’t until later that state investigators and local police realized they were looking for the same man.

“We worked across the hall on this for a couple of months and didn’t know,” Smith said.

Rodriguez-Maturino, 23, is being held in Grand Traverse County’s jail on a $500,000 cash bond pending future court proceedings in accusations outlined in police reports and court documents.

The case in Michigan recalls similar cases of covertly-shot images that have led to changes in laws in other states. In Massachusetts, Michael Robertson, 32, was arrested in 2010 and accused of using his cell phone to take pictures and record video up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court eventually dismissed Robertson’s case, saying that laws against secretly photographing a person in a state of partial nudity didn’t apply to those kinds of secretive shots. The state legislature responded by passing a bill, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Deval Patrick, making photographing or recording video under a person’s clothing a misdemeanor.

In Texas, however, the state’s highest criminal court struck down part of a law banning such photos, reasoning that photos taken without permission in public are entitled to First Amendment protections. And while the majority of states have laws designating some form of video voyeurism as a felony, others have statutes that fail to take into account newer technologies and the ability to quickly distribute pornographic content quickly on the Internet.

Verschaeve said investigators in Rodriguez-Maturino’s case are trying to determine how the suspect obtained the victim’s photographs. He said it’s not uncommon for such images to end up online, but they seldom become the basis of an extortion attempt.

“I think this case is unique in that the suspect sought out the victim,” Verschaeve said.