Son of Buc-ee’s co-owner indicted for filming guests in the shower and having sex. He says the law makes it OK.
An attorney for Mitchell Wasek said “due to the ubiquity of video-recording in modern society, this case involves the legal right to install cameras in one’s own home.”
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The son of a Buc-ee’s co-founder has been indicted on nearly two dozen charges for filming people inside his family’s home using showers and having sex - but he says it’s allowed by law.
A Texas grand jury returned a 21-count indictment accusing Mitchell Wasek, 28, on 17 May of invasive visual recording, the Travis County district attorney announced this week. Wasek is the son of Don Wasek, the co-founder of Buc-ee’s, a chain of gas and travel centers that began in Texas and are spreading across the US.
The charges relate to 13 separate victims, who were alleged to have been secretly recorded by Wasek at his family’s lake home over the course of two years. The home is owned by Don Wasek.
David Gonzalez, an attorney for Mitchell Wasek, told Law&Crime that “due to the ubiquity of video-recording in modern society, this case involves the legal right to install cameras in one’s own home.”
“May a homeowner install a camera in his home without telling housekeepers or guests, or does the guest have a greater legal right than the homeowner? This is one of many thorny legal issues we will be litigating in this case,” he added.
Mitchell Wasek was arrested in October 2023 and was released on a $280,000 bond, online court records show. His charges stem from claims of a woman, who says she and her friends were visiting a lake house with Wasek.
She alleges they found a camera hidden in a charging port plugged into the bathroom wall at the home on the banks of Lake Travis, according to court records obtained by KXAN last year.
The group of friends allegedly left with the camera, only to find on it dozens of videos of themselves and other people in bathrooms and bedrooms, as well as his Dallas apartment, the records reportedly allege.
“They were unaware that the recordings existed in the bedroom and bathroom, and indicated they did not consent to being recorded or photographed,” an arrest affidavit states.
After authorities reviewed the footage, they say they found 68 movie files containing at least 13 male and female individuals being recorded “using toilets, showering, changing clothes and/or having sex.”
The affidavit also states that some videos date to 2021 and were recorded in multiple different locations. Amazon records also linked purchases of “spy cameras” to Wasek.
Ms Wasek is expected to next be in court on June 5.
The Independent has contacted Gonzalez for further comment.