A former law student and son of Buc-ee’s co-founder accused of secretly recording people has been indicted.
A Travis County jury handed down six indictments earlier this month against 28-year-old Mitchell Wasek, who faces 21 counts of invasive visual recording. The indictments are related to incidents involving 13 victims and spanning two years, according to a release from the Travis County District Attorney’s office.
The son of Buc-ee’s co-founder Donald Wasek was a student at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law at the time of some of the recordings. A spokeswoman for SMU said he is no longer enrolled there.
Authorities say Wasek recorded people using the bathroom, showering, changing clothes and having sex at his Dallas home and his father’s home on Lake Travis. He was arrested last year and released on a $280,000 bond.
David Gonzalez, Wasek’s attorney, wrote Thursday in an email statement to The Dallas Morning News the case involves the legal right to install cameras in one’s home and the ubiquitousness of video recording.
“May a homeowner install a camera in his home without telling housekeepers or guests, or does the guest have a greater legal right than the homeowner?” Gonzalez wrote. “This is one of many thorny legal issues we will be litigating in this case.”
In May 2023, a guest at the lake house spotted a charging port with a hidden camera plugged into the bathroom wall, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. The man, who worked in cybersecurity, took the camera and left with his friends.
On the camera’s memory card, the guests found dozens of videos of themselves and others in the bathroom and bedrooms at Wasek’s apartment in The Village in Dallas and the lake house on the banks of Lake Travis.
“They were unaware that the recordings existed in the bedroom and bathroom, and indicated they did not consent to being recorded or photographed,” a Travis County sheriff’s deputy wrote in the affidavit. Authorities reviewed footage and found 68 video files with at least 13 people being recorded, “using toilets, showering, changing clothes, and/or having sex.”
Two of the guests said they filed a police report in Dallas and turned the camera over to the Dallas Police Department, according to the affidavit. A Dallas police spokesperson said she could not confirm the department’s involvement.
Videos on the memory card dated back to 2021 and also included footage at a downtown Austin condo and vacation home in Telluride, Colo., both owned by Wasek’s parents, according to property records.
Amazon records linked purchases of a half-dozen spy cameras and hidden cameras to Mitchell Wasek, the affidavit said.
Wasek is scheduled to appear in court June 5 in Austin. If convicted, he faces up to two years in state jail on each of the 21 counts.
