Twin Cities airport worker charged with recording video in restroom stalls
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Hennepin County prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former worker at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with secretly recording videos of others inside restrooms.
Michael Lamar Maceda-Tapia, 36, is facing 11 gross misdemeanor counts of interference with privacy.
Prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint that on Feb. 16, a worker who was about to use an employee restroom on the lower level of the E concourse spotted a cell phone under the stall. He alerted airport police after spotting the same phone in another stall that was “pointed in his direction.”
After police detained Maceda-Tapia, he allegedly admitted to officers that he'd been recording surreptitious videos in employee restrooms for several months.
Detectives obtained a search warrant for Maceda-Tapia’s phone and according to the complaint, found 143 videos that appeared to have been recorded in airport bathrooms, including two taken in a public restroom on the E concourse.
Investigators identified at least 10 alleged victims by matching timestamps on the cell phone videos with records from the airport’s electronic door badge system and security camera footage. The men confirmed their identities when shown screenshots of the videos, including one “who became upset and refused to look at another photograph,” according to the charges.
In an email to MPR News on Tuesday, airport spokesperson Jeff Lea said Maceda-Tapia had been employed by Midfield Concession Enterprises, a food concession contractor, and his security badge was revoked on the same day that police detained him. Maceda-Tapia’s first MSP security badge was issued in May of 2022.
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