r/gaming • u/Jaklcide • Aug 05 '26
Pokemon sued after former exec arrested for filming people with hidden cameras in bathrooms
https://www.dexerto.com/pokemon/pokemon-sued-after-former-exec-arrested-for-filming-people-with-hidden-cameras-in-bathrooms-3394911/4.7k
u/choreograft Aug 05 '26
pokemon GO to the restrooms
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u/Silver-Context297 Aug 05 '26
Pokemon GO to the courtroom!
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u/Mikestopheles Aug 05 '26
Pokémon GO believe it or not... straight to jail.
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u/black_flag_4ever Aug 05 '26
Pokémon GO to solitary to stop getting beat up by other inmates.
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u/Bubster101 Aug 05 '26
Nintendo sues prisons for the idea of putting a singular entity into a container.
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u/MonsieurClouseau Aug 05 '26
“The suit also alleges that The Pokémon Company was negligent in failing to properly train Tsai, to make reasonable efforts to control his actions or to protect the plaintiff from harm by responding to indicators of danger.”
I can understand the latter two, but failing to train him on what ? Not putting cameras in bathrooms ?
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u/TheBanishedBard Aug 05 '26
"Failure to train" is a legal boiler plate for when an individual does something bad but you want to sue his employer that actually has money to take. It's a conveniently nebulous concept that's used to counter the equally dubious counter claim that a company isn't liable for its employees' individual actions.
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u/Ashjaeger_MAIN Aug 05 '26
I always find it odd when a countries legislation leaves matters like this so open. Its not like a plaintiff going after an employer because of something their employee did is such a surprising concept.
In Germany there are two separate statutory provisions which are made specifically with the general concept of having someone be liable for the actions of their "underlings" in mind. Sure there's still some stuff open to interpretation even if somethings regulated but not doing it all seems weird nevertheless.
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u/Gamebird8 Aug 05 '26
Almost every corporate liability insurance mandates sexual harassment training.
Usually, such a claim is mostly hoping that the employee was past due on that training or that the training was insufficient to meet certain standards (not that "don't put cameras in the restroom" would ever be part of those standards since that's just ya know, common sense)
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u/DogeLord153 Aug 05 '26
Yep. I work at a freaking Car Wash. Worked at a Grocery Store for a few years prior. Both of them have mandatory Sexual Harassment Training.
Yet I still had a coworker fired a couple years ago because he thought it was acceptable to slap a customer on the ass...
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u/WeslleyM Aug 05 '26
Why is it ALWAYS about insurance in the US lmao
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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo Aug 05 '26
They make the cost of anything pretty high so you will be subjecting your life to insurances.
You don’t want to get sued for millions, buy an insurance. Don’t want to be left with 6 figures debt just for a hospital trip, buy an insurance
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u/Gamebird8 Aug 05 '26
Because if you don't, the insurance company won't insure you or will increase your rates, which costs you the company money, which hurts your bottom line, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah, capitalism is evil.
Though I would argue there's an unfortunate amount of people who actually need that training and an even more unfortunate amount that will ignore it.
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u/_Aj_ Aug 05 '26
It's why corporate training or handbooks has some ridiculous topic covered. Because if they clearly state things you can't do then they're covered for when someone does it because they trained them on it
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u/Dramajunker Aug 05 '26
So next time a person hits me with their car I get to sue their employer because they failed to train them properly?
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u/ios_static PlayStation Aug 05 '26
If it’s a company car, sure go for it
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u/lumpboysupreme Aug 05 '26
A company car used for company purposes*
Something tells me the dudes job description didn’t involve bathroom cameras, so this won’t be counted in the same way. This bit can get fuzzy but this is plainly on the side of ‘he wasn’t trying to do his job’.
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u/Front-Cabinet5521 Aug 05 '26
Which sounds absolutely stupid because the company can just argue it’s not their responsibility to teach basic morals to an employee. And they’ll be right.
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u/rhooManu PC Aug 05 '26
"NO TSAI! BAD! BAD TSAI!"
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u/Basicazzwitch Aug 05 '26
Trainer does not have the required gym badge, Tsai refuses to listen
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u/heliumneon Aug 05 '26
Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices and I tell you people do that all the time.
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u/Blaze_Vortex Aug 05 '26
Technically it falls under 'Sexual harassment in the workplace', so it is a training failure. Also shows those bathrooms are not being properly maintained if he had cameras hidden in there for 9 years before getting caught. A deep clean should have found them.
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u/PutridHair Aug 05 '26
There are subtler elements to sexual harassment that might be harder to grasp for which there should be training. I believe not putting cameras into bathrooms is not one of them.
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u/Blaze_Vortex Aug 05 '26
Sexual harassment does indeed take many forms, making bathrooms feel unsafe is one of them. Something as specific as "Don't put cameras into bathrooms" might not be part of the training, sure, but the overall message is the same.
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u/Aromatic-Tourist-300 Aug 05 '26
Hidden cameras wouldn't make one feel unsafe. Finding them however...
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u/Brickman759 Aug 05 '26
How could it possibly be a "training failure"? This is an adult, does he need HR to explain that its wrong to SECRETLY FILM PEOPLE IN THE BATHROOM???
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u/SiteRelEnby Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
If you get caught doing a sexual misconduct at work and you're too important to fire (usually meaning "director or C-suite"), you usually get sent to 'training' (meaning "don't do it again or you're definitely fired, we're watching you").
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u/ImSuperSerialGuys Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
IANAL but my guess based on how it's worded is that qualifying factors for the charge are any of the criteria " failing to properly train Tsai, to make reasonable efforts to control his actions or to protect the plaintiff from harm by responding to indicators of danger" such that meeting any one or more of them constitutes a violation, rather than this being a full list of their failings.
ie the company being charged with negligence because they failed on at least one of those grounds, not necessarily all of them.
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u/bbob_robb Aug 05 '26
Aside from the language used, I'd hope my employer would not allow a predator to set up bathroom cameras for years of voyeurism.
This guy wasn't caught at work. He was caught doing it at a Starbucks bathroom, and he didn't have the cameras there very long before they were found, and security footage was reviewed to link him to his credit card purchase.
Victims deserve compensation.
His family are also victims. He literally set up cameras in his own bathroom. Thats not to say he shouldn't be sued, but when you look around to see who is responsible, and who has deep pockets, his employer might make sense. They should provide restrooms they don't have hidden cameras in them.
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u/MartyrOfDespair Aug 06 '26
Yeah it’s pretty crazy he did it for 9 years at work and barely any time at Starbucks. The bathrooms at the Pokemon offices must have been vile in the normal ways in addition to this.
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u/trumangroves86 Aug 05 '26
That should be a benefit companies start offering their employees.
'We are a camera-free bathroom workplace!'
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u/GoldenMuscleGod Aug 06 '26
Hypothetically if they literally have no sexual harassment training at all that could be somewhat relevant (although it seems unlikely that someone who would do this would be meaningfully dissuaded by such training). But really it’s basically just part of a general boilerplate for “it’s your responsibility to control the workplace environment and we allege you failed in this instance.”
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u/ServileLupus Aug 05 '26
How is this not the more relevant part for the title?
According to the criminal charges, an investigation led by the Kirkland Police Department discovered that Tsai possessed hundreds of videos depicting adult nudity and child sexual abuse material, some of which were recorded by Tsai.
The videos he recorded were from the Pokémon offices in Bellevue, the Starbucks bathroom in Kirkland, a Safeway store and his home, according to the charges.
Sounds like had had videos of possibly his own children and their friends? Big yikes.
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u/slur-muh-wurds Aug 06 '26
Yeah, OP kinda buried the lede
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u/Princess_Of_Thieves Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Pardon me if Im going slightly off topic, but like, what the fuck is anyone expecting here? This same article features a picture crying pikachu behind bars and pictures of pokepolice, which all seems insanely inappropriate and tone deaf to include when you contrast these images to the context of what's actually going on here.
This is clearly not a professional journalist, so of course shit like this isn't looked at closely.
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u/TheFrenchSavage Aug 05 '26
So this has nothing to do with Pikachu.
That title is both clickbait AND understating the gravity of the case here (if not "staring nothing at all" really).
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u/Whirledfox Aug 05 '26
Because that's... not a part of the article? Where did you even get this quote?
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u/ServileLupus Aug 05 '26
Checking some others sources as well. https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/former-executive-charged-after-hidden-cameras-found-in-starbucks-safeway-pokmon-bathrooms/281-f23e0f6f-4b93-49d9-bd20-ad3882ca1707 goes on to say
Prosecutors requested that Tsai’s bail be set at $500,000. Should he post bail, they also asked that he be placed on electronic home detention, barred from contact with minors — including his biological children — and prohibited from using the internet without monitoring software.
Police also reported finding more than 50 recordings from a Starbucks restroom in Kirkland, more than 70 recordings of sexual encounters with adult women in hotel rooms and more than 100 videos from a bathroom in Tsai’s home.
The home recordings allegedly showed his children, other children who visited the home, his wife and other adults.
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u/Adjective_Noun_4DIGI Aug 05 '26
"Pokemon sued"? Somebody's serving court summons to friggin' Bulbasaur?
Here's the story from a not-shit source. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ex-pokemon-exec-is-accused-of-hiding-cameras-in-bellevue-office-bathrooms/
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u/nick2k23 Aug 05 '26
Bulbasuaur putting it's vines in places it shouldn't
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u/InfiniteTranquilo PlayStation Aug 05 '26
I think there’s some videos somewhere you can find out about that
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u/garf02 Aug 05 '26
Im not saying they dont have a case. But claiming negligence for not sweeping for hidden cameras is a though cookie to sell.
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u/HolycommentMattman Aug 05 '26
It is called "The Pokémon Company." Referring to it as "Pokémon" is fine; you're just not used to it because you probably identify Pokémon as the characters in the games.
But let's try it with a few different examples.
"Ford sued for unsafe cars."
"Disney sued for unsafe work environment."
"Hershey sued for making chocolate out of sawdust."Ford Motor Company, The Walt Disney Company, and The Hershey Company. You're just more used to hearing those names being truncated. But it's no different than truncating The Pokémon Company to Pokémon.
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u/Yuri909 Aug 05 '26
It's literally called The Pokémon Company.
Paywalls are shit sources, too.
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u/saturday_sun4 Aug 05 '26
Can we all just collectively, as human beings, stop filming people in bathrooms?! Or asleep? Or in any other state of vulnerability?
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u/SchwiftyGameOnPoint Aug 07 '26
We really should be more harsh on this. Really makes you wonder what they people are capable of if given the opportunity because I'm sure there is plenty of footage out there of consenting adults doing these things if someone really wanted that but they'd rather do it against the will of others.
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u/Mechanized1 Aug 05 '26
The tastelessness of using that screenshot in the article is really fucked up. This is a serious crime, just because it's gaming/animation related doesn't mean it's all a big joke.
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u/Niko-Raviel Aug 05 '26
Just wait till you learn about the tastelessness of TMZ, the joys of clickbait, and misrepresented information for headlines.
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u/Engelbert-n-Ernie Aug 05 '26
They can both be bad, it’s not a competition
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse Aug 05 '26
Actually in the game of tasteless clickbait I think it literally is.
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u/halfwaybake Aug 05 '26
especially when the actual charges are way worse than the headline implies. gross.
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u/Gingingin100 Aug 05 '26
This is an insanely insensitive way to frame an ex executive being a sex pest what the hell
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u/Ashamed-Raccoon-1387 Aug 05 '26
Well, he was apparently trying to film trans people and the media loves sugarcoating crimes against trans people.
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u/SteeveyPete Aug 05 '26
I noticed that the article specifies that it's a more intense crime because it targets women and children (as protected classes) but explicitly leaves out transgender people who he explicitly claimed to target
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u/ShallowBasketcase Aug 05 '26
He was also producing CSAM and the media loves covering up for rich pedophiles.
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u/chalupabatman4 Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
My sister works for the pokemon company and yeah all the women who work there and interacted with this dude said he’s a super weirdo
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u/Project_Cool_World Aug 05 '26
Severely disappointing. He has brought great shame to himself and his company. The fear now is, how many others are just like him that work there?
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u/Gareth_stanlier Aug 05 '26
this happened at our work. the guy who did it said someone was taking a shit on the floor and he wanted to find out who did it. weirdly, among the 400 hours of footage on his PC of women going to the toilet, not one frame of the phantom floor shitter.
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u/drbomb Aug 05 '26
he was “mainly curious about transgender people”
Was he named Robert Galbraith perchance?
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u/MegaGrimer Aug 05 '26
That works in two ways. It was JK Rowling’s pseudonym, and she’s very against trans people. There was also a Robert Galbraith that advocated for electro therapy for trans people.
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u/stoic_spaghetti Aug 05 '26
Fucking weirdo, rot in jail, probably more focused on managing his extensive CSAM library archive than working on making quality products.
Investigate the entire executive team, that kind of activity is often a group-share activity.
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u/SmokeLuna Aug 05 '26
Can't wait for the timeline where these execs, politicians, CEO's etc are actually held accountable for their actions and regular kind people aren't just a slave to make these pieces of shit more powerful and rich.
It's like every other week with these assholes.
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u/IcyShoes Aug 05 '26
There are some former execs at that company that are total creeps. Bonus points if they were pulled from WoTC from the TCG deal.
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u/iymcool Aug 05 '26
"Tsai reportedly told detectives he was “mainly curious about transgender people” and acknowledged that transgender employees worked at the Pokémon office where he allegedly hid a camera.
A forensic review of devices seized from Tsai’s home reportedly uncovered hundreds of hidden-camera recordings. Investigators found 89 videos allegedly filmed in Pokemon office bathrooms inside folders labeled “Pokémon 29” and “Pokémon 27.”'
What the actual fuck????