A former maintenance man at a Palm Springs hotel pleased guilty on Thursday to invasion of privacy after he installed a hidden camera in a bathroom at the Comfort Inn in Palm Springs.
Oscar Patino-Aguilar, 31, will be sentenced for the charge, a misdemeanor, next Friday, reports KESQ. He also pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into county jail and possession of controlled substances.
Aguilar placed a hidden camera in a light fixture of a room that was booked by two women who were staying with their teenage daughters in June of 2016, according to the Desert Sun.
Two days after they checked in, one of the women found Aguilar in her room – which had a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door – with the lights off and the curtains drawn. The women searched the room and found “a small electronic object hugging the light bulb,” according to court documents reported by the newspaper, which was “pointing in the direction of the toilet.
Police were called and Aguilar at first denied the charges, but then admitted he placed the device on the light bulb. He was immediately fired from the hotel, which is now known as the Baymont Inn, and staff searched the hotel for more cameras – saying they came up empty.
The incident was mentioned on a 1-star review on Yelp on June 13:
