A tiny camera hidden in a cellphone charging block has dealt a former Airbnb host a jail sentence and a stern warning to others who dare to secretly record unsuspecting victims.
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Ontario Court Justice Jason Miller sentenced Abinash Samal, 43, to six months in jail followed by two years probation after the banker and part-time home renovator pleaded guilty to one count of voyeurism for secretly filming his Airbnb guests while they were engaged in sexual activity.
“Mr. Samal’s use of sophisticated but easily attainable technology to purposely invade the victims’ privacy by using a rental room as a trap is easily replicated and very difficult to detect,” the judge wrote in his decision. “When offenders, including Mr. Samal, who commit such offences are convicted, the court must send a clear message that such behaviour will generally receive significant penalties.”
Airbnb is an app and website that allows private homeowners to rent out rooms or entire homes to guests for a nightly fee. It’s popular with travellers who want to avoid hotels, which are often more expensive.
Miller rejected the defence argument that Samal be allowed to serve his sentence in the community.
“The victims’ loss of trust and feeling of safety cannot be restored by way of a conditional sentence,” he said.
Miller said he found Samal “to be untrustworthy . . . I am not convinced he can be trusted to follow strict conditions” and added that allowing Samal to serve his sentence in the same place where he committed his crime would not send a strong enough message.
Samal pleaded guilty last fall after a couple who rented a bedroom in his London home through Airbnb discovered the charging block they had mistakenly taken with them contained a small camera that had been pointed at their bed.
The surreptitious recordings began some time in 2023 when Samal was renting out two bedrooms of his home through Airbnb. He bought a spy camera that appeared to be a charging block from Amazon, the online shopping giant, in April 2023.
To move the recordings to another device, the user would have to remove the tiny SD card and insert it into another device, such as a cellphone or a computer. The camera can also be monitored live through a specific app.
Even though there were other electrical outlets in the room, the camera/charging block was placed where it had a clear view of the bed in room.
Around mid-June 2023, a couple was recorded in the rented suite while they were engaged in intimate sexual activity. Attempts were made after Samal’s guilty plea to find the victims, but they could not be located.
A different couple rented the room in July 2023 to attend the annual Rock The Park music festival in London. They mistakenly packed up the charging block with their luggage. Samal left text and phone messages once he discovered it was missing, which was just 20 minutes after the couple left.
Samal told the couple the block belonged to another renter and he was going to be charged for it if it wasn’t returned. The renter who took the block called and apologized with a promise to mail it back.
Samal continued to urgently contact the couple over the following days, threatening to charge them $70, which police later discovered was the cost to buy the product. That raised the couple’s suspicions and they examined the charger with a flashlight, discovering the camera. There was no memory card in the device when they looked at it.
They called police. Samal’s cellphone and computer were seized and two videos of the unknown couple having sex were discovered in the recycle bin of the laptop. The same videos, which were about 12-minutes long in total, were found on Samal’s cellphone.
Miller said in his decision he was convinced Samal placed the camera where he did to capture sexual activity.
“I specifically reject Mr. Samal’s minimization that he was trying to protect himself based on a prior poor experience with Airbnb guests,” the judge wrote in his decision. “I also reject his position that after realizing he had captured such intimate activity, he took steps to ensure he was no longer in possession of it.”
Miller noted in his decision that Samal had not disclosed to his employer about his legal predicament and had told a social worker who conducted a risk assessment that he had put the camera in the bedroom “for security reasons.”
He was found to be an average risk to re-offend compared to other sex offenders.
“Further, he shows no insight into his offending behaviour, or is being dishonest about it, and there are concerns about some of his decisions which raise his risk, in my view,” the judge wrote.
While he is no longer an Airbnb host, he has rented a room to a long-term tenant, Miller said.
The couple who discovered the camera submitted a victim impact statement in which they said they had suffered psychological harm, lost trust in people and have been unable to travel.
Miller said the unidentified couple in the videos may well learn about the case through publicity, noting: “I infer they, like any other citizen who paid for private lodgings only to have their most intimate moments surreptitiously videotaped and stored by the offender, would suffer foreseeable and significant psychological harm.”
The judge added: “Indeed, reasonable people who read about this case, and cases like it, will lose at least some confidence in using services like Airbnb or hotels.”