TV Station Employee Fired for Secretly Recording His Co-Workers

WPLG says that they have fired one of their employees and he is now under a criminal investigation.

Rafael Martinez worked for more than two decades as an Engineer at the Miami station, before he was fired last week.

The station fired Martinez after they said he was recording videos on his cellphone of other employees in private settings without their consent.

The station has handed the phone over to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. They say that on the phone are several videos from under the anchor desk in our main studio, from our control room and from a newsroom set that WPLG calls “the tower” — a raised platform we use for breaking news, news updates and to introduce stories to you.

WPLG says that after a complaint by an employee, station management immediately confiscated Martinez’s cellphone and found the inappropriate and illegal videos.

The station says that in some of the videos, Martinez’s cellphone camera is pointed up their skirt. In others, his cellphone is placed in obscure locations aimed to capture private images.

”This is an illegal action. That is why we got BSO involved immediately,” said Bert Medina, president and CEO of WPLG, Inc. “It is our responsibility to report something like this. As painful as it is to have it occur in the WPLG family, it is our responsibility to get law enforcement involved.”

The station sent a crew to Martinez’s house for comment, but he wasn’t home, or did not answer.

“We are going out with this story because if we cover the news every day, we need to be transparent when happens in our building,” Medina said. “And to the viewers, we pledge that we will be completely transparent as this story develops.”

The station says that an arrest is likely in the case.

H/T WPLG