The perverted son of a California Airbnb host was sentenced last week to more than three years in a federal lockup after he secretly filmed a guest getting out of the shower and later threatened to share part of the footage with her loved ones, prosecutors said.
The prison sentence was handed down to Kevin James Strutz, 52, on Nov. 27 after he pleaded guilty to trying to blackmail the victim into sending him a sexually explicit video during a twisted harassment campaign over social media.
Strutz and the woman both lived at Strutz’s mother’s house in the city of Ceres, where the victim rented out a room in February 2020, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said.
The victim, a traveling occupational therapist, abruptly took off the same month when she spotted a creepy drafted message on a smartphone left in a shared bathroom, prosecutors said.
“This girl, (VICTIM 1) is driving me crazy. She’s accidentally sexy. I don’t think that’s what she wants here,” part of the message seen by the victim stated, according to a criminal complaint. “I never get what I want and it frustrates me…”
Airbnb put her up in a hotel room that night after the company was notified and then helped her relocate to another home, but the harassment from Strutz was only just starting.
Strutz continued to contact the victim through multiple Facebook accounts, including one that had a false identity.
He then threatened to send nude pics of the woman to all of her contacts and attached an image of her naked from the waist up if she didn’t send him a video of her touching herself, the complaint states.
In an interview with the FBI, Strutz admitted to filming the woman using a cell phone in a basket, but claimed he wasn’t going to send it to anyone else, the complaint states.
He was arrested in June 2020 and pleaded guilty to two counts of cyberstalking in May of this year.
Airbnb condemned the perverted behavior when reports of the Strutz’s actions first came to light.
“We have no tolerance for the reported behavior and worked quickly to support the survivor once she brought it to our attention, including banning the associated host accounts from our platform at the time,” the company said in a statement reported by CBS Bay Area.
During the 2020 probe, authorities also discovered Strutz sent a series of threatening messages to another woman in September 2018 in which he tried to coerce her to engage in sexual acts with him, the US Attorney’s Office said.
The victim was included in the recent guilty plea and sentencing, the US Attorney’s Office said.
Strutz had a history of arrests dating back to 1991 and as recently as 2018, the feds said. Among the charges were stalking, violating court orders to prevent domestic violence, burglary, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.