A pharmacist at the University of Maryland Medical Center allegedly carried out a nearly decade-long campaign of cyber-voyeurism, hacking hundreds of hospital computers to activate the webcams and watch young, female doctors and medical residents undressing and pumping breastmilk, according to a class-action lawsuit by six women that was filed Thursday.

The women further accuse Dr. Matthew Bathula of installing software on hospital computers to steal their personal passwords and take control of their home networks.

Allegations include that Bathula watched the women in real-time, including one in Howard County, while she was home with her children, breastfeeding, undressing, and having sex with her husband. He is accused of disabling the camera light inside another woman’s home to secretly record videos of her with her children, and of hacking into the cloud account of yet another plaintiff to see her personal photos, driver’s license, passport and credit card information.

“The scale of the privacy invasion giving rise to this action is as unprecedented as it is shocking,” Steve Kelly, their attorney, wrote in the Baltimore Circuit Court lawsuit. “For nearly a decade, a single pharmacist named Matthew Bathula installed spyware on at least 400 computers in clinics, treatment rooms, labs and a variety of other locations at one of the nation’s premier teaching hospitals.”

The women are suing the hospital for negligence, saying they only discovered that they had been spied on in recent months after FBI agents showed them some of Bathula’s photos and videos, according to the lawsuit. They noted that the FBI is investigating.

State and federal court records show Bathula, of Howard County, has not been charged with a crime. Bathula could not immediately be reached for comment. He’s listed online as having a medical office on Eastern Avenue in the Bayview neighborhood of Southeast Baltimore. A call to the office went unanswered, and there’s been no response to a message left there.

A spokeswoman for the Baltimore office of the FBI declined to comment, saying their policy prohibits the bureau from confirming or denying any contacts or investigations.

University of Maryland Medical System officials have been working with the FBI and federal prosecutors for the past several months as part of the ongoing criminal investigation, a spokesman for the hospital system said.

“The actions alleged in this matter run counter to every single value we stand for,” wrote spokesman Michael Schwartzberg in an email. “At every level of our organization, we are deeply disappointed and angered at the actions of the individual at the center of this criminal investigation. It’s our most sincere hope and expectation that the person alleged to have violated the trust of his colleagues and of our organization will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.“

The University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore alerted employees in October of a “serious IT incident,” according to the lawsuit. Hospital system officials circulated an email that described the event as a “highly sophisticated and very difficult to detect cyberattack that has resulted in the theft of data from shared UMMS computers.”

The hospital system placed Bathula on administrative leave and later fired him, according to the lawsuit. But administrators failed to warn his new employer of the allegations.

The Maryland Board of Pharmacy shows Bathula has an active license that was issued in June 2008 and expires in September.

The women are alleging that hospital security officials should have known Bathula was using his electronic badge to swipe into rooms and tamper with the computers where he had no legitimate business. He used this unfettered access to install keystroke loggers onto hundreds of hospital computers over the course of about a decade, according to the lawsuit. Keystroke loggers come in software that can be secretly downloaded to record everything someone types, even passwords.

Bathula allegedly hacked the computer cameras in the James Frenkil Building in downtown Baltimore.

The hospital system removed and replaced all the compromised computers and all the cameras in the patient exam rooms of the Frenkil building. They also installed software to block keystroke loggers.

“We continue to take aggressive steps to protect our IT systems in this challenging environment. We understand the sensitivity of some of the information involved in this matter and extend our deepest regret and compassion to those affected by this individual’s actions,” Schwartzberg said.

Still, the hospital administrators have failed to notify all staff and patients about the extent of the hack, the women allege in their lawsuit. There could be 80 more victims, their attorneys wrote.

“We do not know the full scope of those who have been directly impacted by UMMC’s shocking institutional failures,” Cindy B. Morgan, one of their attorneys, wrote in an email. “While our clients fully intend to respect and cooperate fully with the federal investigation, we filed this Complaint to ensure that the offender is immediately prevented from harming others and so that all of his victims are offered a chance to seek justice and hold UMMC fully accountable.”

The Medical Center, where Bathula worked, serves as the academic campus of the University of Maryland Medical System’s hospitals and clinics. The women called the security measures “woefully inadequate” and saying the incident has destroyed their sense of security.

Identified as Jane Does 1 through 6 in the lawsuit, they live in Baltimore City, Howard and Anne Arundel counties, and North Carolina. All are current or former employees of the hospital system. They are requesting a jury trial.

In 2015, Bathula was recognized as a Preceptor of the Year, meaning instructor, by the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.

He graduated from the pharmacy school in 2008 and went on to a residency at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where he also trained pharmacy students. A president’s report from the Montgomery County Community College in 2011 celebrated Bathula for being appointed as a clinical specialist in pharmacy in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical System and as a teacher in the pharmacy school.

This is a breaking news story that may be updated.