Look Up!

The perplexed couple you see below are Mr and Mrs Derek Starnes, who went to Florida and booked a stay at someone else's house through this Airbnb dealio.

I might as well add here, so that you won't confuse me for an objective reporter, that you could offer ME a thousand dollars a night to stay at some stranger's house and you could keep your grand.  I think the word for sleeping in someone's house when you don't even know them would be "oogie."  

And here is just one reason: the Starneses found this Fla Dream Vacay Home studded with hidden cameras like chocolate chips on a cookie.  Oh yeah. 

Derek and the Missus had already sacked out one night at the rental home of one Wayne Natt in fashionable Longboat Key when they noticed a small hole in the side of the smoke detector in the master bedroom.  Starnes took the device down, and found the smoke detector had an interesting accessory added -  a camera. He then removed the memory card from that camera and another secreted in the living room in the same manner, and saw video of himself and his wife and other people, suspected victims all.

“My wife and I are distressed by this situation. I hope more victims will come forward,” Starnes said.

I guess so.  As you see from their picture, that tiny camera did a great job! They probably wish their wedding pictures had come out that clear. 

The cameras are really tiny

Natt has been charged with one count of video voyeurism, a third-degree felony in FLA.

Police down there say that Natt claims he is innocent! Big surprise! And his story is, the cameras were there for people who wished to go home from their Florida getaway with a video of them doing the the hibbidy-dibbidy. 

You will never NOT look for holes
in a smoke detector again!

The police were skeptical of this, as police tend to be when handed a boatload of manure.  "If everyone had knowledge, then why hidden cameras?" Lt. Bob Bourque asked the local news. "His answer to that was, a better angle of video, which we don’t necessarily believe."

So this is why I don't want to rent someone's house when I travel. I don't want to wind up in some Fellini-inspired cinematic triumph, thank you.

Airbnb reports they are "outraged" about the whole daggone thing, and Natt is banned from booking his Love Shack through them forever, although they did leave open the possibility of hiring him to do a video for their Christmas Office Party.