Guy Who Worked At The Pokémon Company Arrested For Spying On Bathrooms

Ben Tsai, a 44-year-old man in the Seattle suburb of Bothell, Washington, was arrested earlier this month after he allegedly hid a camera in a Starbucks bathroom in nearby Kirkland. Tsai allegedly told law enforcement that he had hidden cameras in bathrooms dozens of times in public places including local supermarkets and his workplace. According to the Seattle Times, that workplace wasn’t named in the court documents on Tsai’s arrest, but the paper was able to trace Tsai’s last place of employment by finding his since-deleted LinkedIn account: The Pokémon Company.

In a statement to the paper, The Pokémon Company says Tsai is no longer part of the company as of earlier this month, and that the corporation is cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation. Tsai was the director of engineering out of the company’s Bellevue office, and prosecutors allege that he targeted transgender colleagues at Pokémon.

Bellevue police spokesperson Drew Anderson told the Seattle Times that it had not received any reports about Tsai engaging in voyeurism at The Pokémon Company, and was not investigating his workplace behavior, but urged anyone who needed to report any such information to the police department.

The Seattle Times story has the play-by-play on how Tsai was caught, which was primarily thanks to his using his credit card to buy a coffee at the Starbucks, after which he admitted to hiding cameras in various places “no more than fifty times,” though he said he does not sell or give out the videos he records. The report says Tsai claimed he was “mainly curious about transgender people and was not attracted to children.” 

“He told us that he had placed a camera in his workplace bathroom,” a detective wrote in the report. “I asked him if there were any transgender people that work in his office and he said yes.”

The police have seized equipment and a hard drive from Tsai’s home. His trial is set for March.