The son of one of California’s Airbnb hosts was sentenced to more than three years in federal lockup last week after he secretly filmed a guest leaving the bathroom and then threatened to share parts of the footage with his loved ones, prosecutors said.
The prison sentence was handed down to Kevin James Strutz, 52, on November 27 after he pleaded guilty to trying to blackmail victims into sending him sexually explicit videos during a twisted social media harassment campaign.
Strutz and the woman both lived at Strutz’s mother’s home in the city of Ceres, where the victim rented a room in February 2020, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said.
The victim, an itinerant occupational therapist, suddenly left that same month when she spotted a creepy framed message on a smartphone left in a shared bathroom, prosecutors said.
“This woman, (VICTIM 1) drives me crazy. She’s unintentionally sexy. I don’t think that’s what he wanted here,” part of the message the victim saw stated, according to the criminal complaint. “I never get what I want and it frustrates me…”
Kevin James Strutz, 52, was sentenced to prison on November 27 after he pleaded guilty.
Airbnb put him up in a hotel room that night after the company was notified and then helped him move to another home, but the harassment from Strutz had only just begun.
Strutz continued to contact the victim through several Facebook accounts, including one with a false identity.
Airbnb says it has zero tolerance for reported behavior. Shutterstock
He then threatened to send nude photos of the woman to all his contacts and attached images of her naked from the waist up if she didn’t send a video of her touching herself, the complaint said.
In an interview with the FBI, Strutz admitted to recording the woman using a cell phone in the basket, but claimed he was not going to send it to anyone else, the complaint said.
He was arrested in June 2020 and pleaded guilty to two counts of cyberstalking in May this year.
It happened in 2020. Getty Images
Airbnb denounced the misguided behavior when reports of Strutz’s actions first came to light.
“We have zero tolerance for reported behavior and worked quickly to support the survivor once she brought it to our attention, including banning the relevant host account from our platform at that time,” the company said in a statement reported by CBS Bay Area.
The guest immediately left the California home after a strange message was left for him. Getty Images
During the 2020 investigation, authorities also found Strutz sent a series of threatening messages to another woman in September 2018 in which he tried to force her to perform sexual acts with him, the US Attorney’s Office said.
The victims were included in the recent guilty pleas and sentencing, the US Attorney’s Office said.
Strutz has an arrest history dating back to 1991 and as recently as 2018, the feds said. Among the charges are stalking, violating a court order to prevent domestic violence, burglary, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
