‘Pokémon’ has been sued for exactly what it would never want: recording people without their consent in the bathroom

When Satoshi Tajiri came up with the idea of creating a game based on his childhood hobby of collecting insects, he didn’t expect that 30 years later he’d have dozens of video games, several anime and movies, a card game people pay a fortune for, a live-action movie, several manga, dedicated stores all over Japan and, of course, all the merchandising anyone could dream of. That said, he surely didn’t imagine that either Pokémon would end up with a lawsuit for recording people in the bathroom without consent.

Gotta catch all the illegalities

It all starts with Ben Tsai, a former director at The Pokémon Company who was arrested a month ago for secretly recording people in the bathrooms at the Bellevue office. Now, the company has also been taken to court for not protecting its employees. Apparently, Tsai had recorded children and unclothed women while they used the bathroom, and streamed live to his phone. Just what you picture when you think of Pokémon, really.

For the record, Tsai didn’t just put cameras in his office: he also watched his family members and people in supermarkets, which he kept in a collection of hundreds of videos. According to Tsai, he was curious about transgender people and had no interest in children, despite the 89 videos he had saved and for which no one gave explicit consent. Yikes.

Tsai is in jail on $500,000 bail and plans to plead not guilty. Meanwhile, The Pokémon Company will be accused of not training Tsai or taking steps to supervise him and protect the rest of the employees. Some people simply never should have become the boss of anything.