SUIT VS. ‘LIAR SIRE’
Blames son, 10, for spy cams: assistant
A married Manhattan entrepreneur who hired a young woman as a live-in assistant allegedly outfitted her bedroom and bathroom with hidden cameras — and when he got caught, blamed his 10-yearold son, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.
“I am mortified,” wrote Tandem CEO Arthur Freydin (inset) in a text message to his assistant after she allegedly discovered a surreptitiously recorded video of her taken in his Midtown apartment bathroom, court documents claim.
“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,” Freydin allegedly texted the woman.
The young woman, who is only identified as Jane Doe in court papers, made the alarming alleged discovery Sept. 29 when she was at the office and her phone began malfunctioning, the suit says. She asked to borrow Freydin’s to make a call, the documents claim.
She was stunned to find an app on his phone called LookCam that contained video footage of her from in- side the bathroom she shared with him and his wife Sarah McLaughlin, according to court documents.
“The video footage was in his recently viewed history,” wrote her lawyer, Dan Perrone, in the federal complaint.
The woman, a recent college graduate in her 20s, rushed back to the apartment on East 56th Street, allegedly found a camera disguised as a USB charger in the residence’s sole bathroom and confronted McLaughlin, the papers state.
“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 court documents. The suit says Freydin initially claimed he had no idea how the app got on his phone.
“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 texted his assistant, according to the papers.
It wasn’t immediately clear from the court documents if the footage showed the woman nude or in an otherwise compromising way.
The assistant reported the incident to the NYPD and was promptly fired from her $55,000a-year gig and locked out of her e-mail account, the papers allege.
McLaughlin first hired the woman in February as a babysitter for her two kids from a prior marriage, the suit says. A month later, McLaughlin invited her to work full-time as her husband’s assistant, but required her to live with them four to five days a week, the lawsuit claims.
The atmosphere was “both controlling and sexually charged, with harassment ranging from sexually charged comments to unwanted, sexual touching,” it states.
The suit names Freydin, McLaughlin and Tandem as defendants and alleges violations of New York human rights law, gender discrimination and sexual harassment.
The couple didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment by e-mail or phone, nor did Tandem.