A man from Ceres, California has been sentenced to prison after being found guilty of cyberstalking and blackmailing a guest who stayed in his mother’s Airbnb rental, Insider reported.
Kevin Strutz, aged 51, pleaded guilty to two counts of cyberstalking earlier this year. The incident occurred in 2020 when Strutz began cyberstalking a young woman who had rented a room in his mother’s home through Airbnb. According to the complaint, Strutz and his mother were living in the home when the incident occurred. The woman, who is a traveling occupational therapist, had been staying at the home for around a month.
One day, she came across a disturbing message —
“which talked about how ‘sexy’ she was”
— on a cell phone in the shared bathroom, which led her to contact Airbnb and find another place to stay. After her departure, Strutz later sent sexually explicit messages to her on Facebook. The woman notified local authorities and Airbnb.
At the time, Airbnb said they had been cooperating with the FBI during the investigation.
“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 told CBS News.
According to prosecutors, Strutz continued to harass the woman for several months. Surprisingly to her, she received a nude image of herself from when she showered in the Airbnb bathroom from Strutz, prosecutors allege. He threatened to send the photo of her to everyone she knew unless she sent him a video of herself masturbating. The woman blocked Strutz’s accounts and reported the incident to the police again.
It was later revealed that Strutz had secretly filmed the woman using a hidden cell phone in the bathroom. Strutz was convicted on two counts of stalking, in addition to a separate incident involving threats towards another victim. He was recently sentenced to over three years in prison, along with supervised release and a fine. Before this conviction, Strutz had a criminal record that included stalking, burglary, robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon.
#Clique, what are your thoughts?
