Son of Buc-ee’s Co-Founder Indicted for Secret Bathroom Cameras: Officials

The son of Don Wasek, the co-founder of the convenience store chain Buc-ee’s, was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on 21 felony counts related to allegedly having recorded people in bathrooms without their consent over a period of two years, authorities announced Wednesday. Mitchell Wasek was charged with the invasive visual recording of 13 individual victims “using the toilet, showering, changing clothes, and/or having sex,” Travis County District Attorney José Garza said. An arrest affidavit in the case lays out how Wasek was arrested in Oct. 2023, after a party guest at his family’s lake house noticed a charging port for a spy camera in a bathroom. The camera’s memory card showed videos secretly taken in a number of the family’s properties, including an apartment in Austin and a vacation home in Telluride, Colorado. Investigators later found that Wasek had purchased more than a dozen video surveillance cameras on Amazon, according to court records obtained by Texas station KXAN. David Gonzalez, Wasek’s attorney, told the Austin American-Statesman that the case involved “many thorny legal issues,” including “the legal right to install cameras in one’s own home.” Buc-ee’s, founded in 1982, has long prided itself on having the “cleanest restrooms in America.”