A Starbucks employee charged this week with planting six hidden cameras in the store’s unisex bathroom has been found dead in a hotel.
Eric Arthur Efaw, 44, from Riverview in Florida, was arrested on Wednesday after his horrified manager at the store in Brandon found a camera attached to a pipe hidden under the sink facing the store’s toilet.
When police reviewed the footage, they noticed Efaw’s number plate flash up when he had walked to his car with the camera still on.
After being charged on Thursday with misdemeanour voyeurism and released on a $10,000 bond, Efaw was found dead on Sunday in a hotel room in Punta Gorda, Florida.
He had admitted during investigations that he had placed cameras in the Starbucks restroom between six and seven times in the past two months, police said.
An investigation is under way into the cause of his death but foul play is not suspected.
Efaw was the latest in a series of high-tech peeping Toms recently charged with coffee shop voyeurism.
According to police the use of hidden cameras to surreptitiously record victims is on the rise.
Last month, William Zafra Velasco, 25, was charged with using a spy camera disguised as a coat hook to film at least 45 women and children in a Starbucks toilet.
Over a two day period from April 14 to 15, police said Velasco would enter the ladies room of the Route 66 Starbucks every hour to download the videos and then replace the spy device.
