The agency that couldn’t stop a lone gunman from nearly taking out President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, is back in the news for all the wrong reasons.
A Secret Service trainee who once worked as an analyst on the presidential protection team has been arrested for allegedly installing a hidden spy camera in his roommate’s phone charger and stalking him for weeks with creepy text messages.
According to ABC News, citing police reports from Glynn County, Georgia, Joel Lara Canvasser, a student at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, secretly filmed his suitemate, another Secret Service trainee, using a camera hidden inside a phone charger he “generously” offered after the victim’s own charger mysteriously disappeared.
Canvasser allegedly told his roommate the “cleaning ladies may have taken it.” The victim plugged it in below the TV, giving the hidden camera a full view of the entire room, and, as it turned out, the bathroom too.
The harassment didn’t stop at voyeurism. Police say Canvasser launched a weeks-long psychological terror campaign, sending harassing text messages from various numbers that made it sound like a deranged stalker was watching the victim’s every move, even when he was in the bathroom with his phone in his pocket.
The victim initially thought his phone had been hacked. He covered the camera with a Band-Aid. He even went to Canvasser, who has a cyber background and was supposedly “good with technology,” for help resetting the device.
After the reset, the phone mysteriously connected to Canvasser’s personal WiFi. The texts stopped briefly… then came roaring back.
It was only when the victim noticed an “unusual glint” on the borrowed charger and saw the hidden lens that the nightmare became clear.
More from ABC News:
“There was a specific instance where [the roommate] was using the bathroom and his phone was in his pocket. When he finished, he checked his phone and saw a message referencing him using the bathroom. It was at this point that [the roommate] realized the individual was not watching him through his phone camera but instead from another device,” according to the report.
Upon examining the borrowed charger, the roommate noticed it had an unusual glint, and “realized it was a camera,” the report said. “When he had pulled it out of the wall, the light hit the device in such a way that made the lens visible.”
Canvasser’s alleged harassing voyeurism did not stop at the surreptitious filming, according to the report: the roommate told police that “during the past month, Mr. Joel has gone into [his] room on multiple occasions while he’s been sleeping at night. For this reason, [the roommate] has been locking his things up in attempts to prevent these events.”
Canvasser was arrested on Wednesday and charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance. He posted a bond of $8,458.
His security clearance has since been suspended, and his access to all Secret Service systems has been revoked.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn called the charges “deeply troubling” in a statement to ABC News:
“An initial investigation by the Secret Service and FLETC led to the individual’s arrest by local authorities. The charges are deeply troubling and raise significant concerns about the individual’s character and fitness to serve. As this matter is now before the courts, we will allow the facts to be presented through the judicial process. We commend the swift actions of Secret Service trainers and FLETC personnel, whose prompt response ensured the matter was quickly brought forward and addressed through appropriate legal channels.”
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