The ad “Small cocoon and bright duplex on Place Cauchoise”, rated 4.56/5 on the Airbnb rental site, does not indicate that it is possible, as a bonus, to be filmed there.
Yet this is what a young 24-year-old Dieppe woman, Larissa Angaman, discovered, who came to Rouen (Seine-Maritime) to spend a weekend with friends with her boyfriend.
“We sometimes rent a small accommodation to come and party in Rouen and avoid having to take the wheel again while sleeping there.
This was the first time”, says the young house painter who in the middle of the night from Saturday 11 to Sunday 12 December goes to the bathroom to use the toilet.
This is where she explains that she was attracted by a strange reflection coming from a small alarm clock facing the shower.
“Looking closer, I saw like a small lens with a light.
It looked like a mini-camera.
".
She wakes up her companion and they open the device to discover a small video recording device with an SD card.
“We were totally hallucinated.
We started looking everywhere and that's when we found a USB power strip attached to the bedroom wall with the same kind of device inside.
»
Read alsoTourist rental scam: they wanted to see the Colmar Christmas market and they saw Belfort
Shocked, the young woman cannot get back to sleep and decides to return to her parents in the morning, taking the objects of the crime.
“With my father, we took everything apart and looked at what was on the SD cards.
This is where the young woman really realizes that she was filmed without her knowledge for the duration of her stay.
She even sees on the images an individual coming into the room before his arrival.
“He surely came to see that everything was going well”, believes to guess the Dieppoise who says she is still greatly disturbed by this discovery.
“It's unhealthy, it's perverse, it's vicious to do something like that.
We feel violated in our privacy.
As of Sunday, she decides to go to the Dieppe police station to file a complaint.
"I didn't want to stop there.
They took my statement and that of my boyfriend.
And asked me to come back the next day with the photos I had taken there and the two devices concerned.
And an investigator from Rouen called me back at the beginning of the week to ask me for more details and to tell me that, for their part, they had contacted the person who rented the apartment.
»
“I tell myself that many other people may have been victims of this patient”
Larisa, 24 years old
Also contacted by Larissa Angaman, the Airbnb rental site came back to her, offering to reimburse her for her rental and indicating that the ad from the renter in question would be removed from the site while waiting to learn more.
As reported by the Actu76 site, which revealed the case, Airbnb claims to be “at the disposal of the police in their investigation.
We enforce strict policies regarding the use of any type of monitoring device within accommodations rented on our platform and take firm action against anyone who violates our rules.”
Aitbnb adds that "the presence of surveillance devices hidden or present in private spaces, such as bathrooms, bedrooms or other rest areas" is strictly prohibited. For Larissa Angaman, who also wanted to testify via a video on his Instagram account, it is essential that whoever filmed it answer for his actions.
“I tell myself that many other people may have been victims of this patient.
I hope the investigation will find out more and that he will be convicted for what he did.
»
In Rouen, in October 2017, a man who filmed his tenants in their privacy with a camera hidden in a box, in particular six young women who had come to celebrate a bachelor party and who had reserved his apartment via the Airbnb platform, had been sentenced by the Rouen criminal court to a one-year prison term, including six months suspended.
