Newark police investigating camera found in women's bathroom at real estate office

Isabel Hughes | The News Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Headlines November 12, 2019 Here are some of the top stories we're following for Tuesday November 12, 2019.

Newark police are looking into how a camera got into a women's bathroom at a Newark real estate office and what might have been captured on video.

Officers were called to Patterson-Schwartz's South College Avenue office Monday afternoon after an employee called to report a hidden camera in the women's bathroom, Newark police Lt. Andrew Rubin said.

The caller told police the camera was "concealed" in a bathroom stall, Rubin said. The bathroom is in an area that the public has access to during classes offered at the office.

Rubin said the camera, which officers seized, does not appear to have been connected to any network or the internet, and detectives are looking at the camera's contents to determine what, if anything, was caught on video.

Monday's incident is not the first time a camera has been found in a Newark bathroom.

In 2015, a former University of Delaware doctoral candidate was sentenced to two years in prison for secretly recording hundreds of women in bathrooms at the school and in Newark.

Read all our breaking news stories — and the stories that follow as we learn more — with a subscription to Delaware Online.

Javier Mendiola-Soto, a Mexican national who was in Delaware on a student visa, captured more than 1,500 videos of women using bathrooms between May 2012 and June 2014, court documents said.

He hid cameras in at least 10 locations around the university and in Newark, including at the Hugh Morris Library, Memorial Hall, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory, and Willard Hall Education Building.

He also hid cameras in the bathroom at Goodwill and his home in Newark, where he lived with several female roommates, court documents said.

Mendiola-Soto pleaded guilty in December 2014 to 49 counts of felony invasion of privacy. Each count related to a specific woman who was recorded and identified by investigators.

A year and a half later, Luis Eduardo Lopez, of Wilmington, was charged after a Moe's Southwest Grill employee found a hidden camera in the bathroom of the restaurant in Milltown. Lopez worked at the Kirkwood Highway Moe's at the time.

STORY: Woman covertly filmed in Moe's restroom sues man who hid camera

After the camera was reported to police, investigators recovered videos of girls whom court documents describe as young as 4 years old when they were filmed as well as images of other women and female employees of the restaurant using the bathroom.

Lopez told investigators he planted the camera to spy on an employee he thought was using drugs on the job and then "he realized" he was capturing "private parts" of women causing him to continue spying, court documents state.

In January 2017, Lopez pleaded guilty to five felony charges of violation of privacy and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Send story tips or ideas to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com or 302-324-2785. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes_