Arthur Freydin: NYC boss caught filming aide in bathroom blames his 10-year-old son
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: A married Manhattan entrepreneur has been accused of installing hidden cameras in the bedroom and bathroom of a young woman — a live-in assistant he had hired. After getting caught, the man, Arthur Freydin, put the blame on his son, 10, said a federal lawsuit filed on Monday, October 11. After she discivered a video of herself on Freydin's phone, Tandem CEO Arthur Freydin said in a text message to his assistant, “I am mortified. I’ve already sorted things out with [my son] …He of course had no idea what he was doing and this is a serious lesson for him but I want to make sure you are okay."
The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the court papers, made the discovery on September 29 while she was at the office. Her phone began malfunctioning and she requested Freydin to lend her his phone to make a call. This is when she found that his phone had an application called LookCam installed in it, which had video footage of her from inside the bathroom. She shared the bathroom with Freydin and his wife Sarah McLaughlin, court documents claimed. “The video footage was in his recently viewed history,” wrote her lawyer, Dan Perrone, in the federal complaint.
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Jane Doe is in her her 20s and is a recent college graduate. Upon discovering the video, she rushed back to the apartment on East 56th Street, and allegedly found a camera disguised as a USB charger in the bathroom. She then confronted McLaughlin.
“She used the bathroom in which the spy camera was hidden daily to urinate, defecate, dress, undress and shower, among other things, thus, had been nude therein on multiple occasions,” Perrone wrote of the assistant in the court document. In a text to Jane Doe, Freydin said that he had no idea how the app got installed on his phone, the suit claims. “I noticed an app this morning that I don’t recognize (I download tons of apps. And never open most of them) and didn’t think anything of it,” he allegedly wrote. He immediately deleted the app after being told about the video.
The woman reported the incident to the NYPD, and was immediately fired from her $55,000-a-year gig. She was locked out of her e-mail account as well. A week before discovering the bathroom footage, the woman had allegedly found a hidden camera in her bedroom, and after she unplugged it again, Freydin asked her why she had done that.
Jane Doe was initially hired by McLaughlin to babysit her two kids from a prior marriage. Later, however, she invited the woman to work as her husband's assistant. In the new role, she needed to live with the family for four to five days a week. The atmosphere was “both controlling and sexually charged, with harassment ranging from sexually charged comments to unwanted, sexual touching,” the complaint said.
Court documents said that Freydin had allegedly forced the woman to undress to her bra for one office project, on the pretext of demonstrating how kinesiology tape could be used on her neck and back. Every morning, Freydin made her accompany him to the gym, and would stand behind her as she worked out. The couple used their “influence and money to commit unthinkable acts of depravity and sexual deviance at the expense of a young, trusting woman in desperate need of gainful employment,” Perrone wrote. The suit has named Freydin, McLaughlin and Tandem as defendants, and alleged that they violated the New York human rights law, gender discrimination and sexual harassment.