The former sales manager of a Dallas-area Toyota dealership is facing criminal charges after allegedly sending a nude photo of a female customer he found on a phone to a swingers’ website, according to news reports. And, unsurprisingly, the couple who came into buy a car is also suing both the dealership and Toyota.
According to the Dallas Morning News, last year Tim Gautreaux and his wife Claire Gautreaux went to Grapevine Toyota in Dallas to purchase a new Prius. They were about to close the deal when Matthew Luke Thomas, the dealership’s sales director, found nude photos of Claire Gautreaux on her husband’s phone, which he was in possession of for a brief time. He then allegedly sent the photo to an email address for a swingers’ website, the paper reports.
Thomas has been charged with computer security breach, a class B misdemeanor.
Thomas came to have Tim Gautreaux’s phone because he had a screenshot of a credit pre-approval saved to his photos. The salesman they were working with asked to borrow the phone so he could show his manager, Thomas, in order to help speed the final approval along.
The story says that when Tim Gautreaux got his phone back he noticed that a year-old photo of his wife had been pulled up. The photo in question was as he described a “private moment” of his wife leaving the bathtub. Tim Gautreux then accessed his sent emails and found that the photo was emailed to a website for swingers, the paper reports.
The email was actually immediately deleted after it was sent, but Gautreux had installed an app that can quickly recover deleted messages.
Police were brought in to investigate, the dealership owner told authorities that Thomas was in possession of the phone when the messages were allegedly sent. Investigators also found that Thomas had an active profile on the swingers’ site. (Jalopnik has reached out to Toyota of Grapevine for comment. We will update this post if they respond.)
The Gautreaux family, clearly violated by the entire incident, hired noted attorney Gloria Allred to sue both Grapevine Toyota and Toyota Motors North America. Allred who is famous for representing women against Donald Trump and Bill Cosby. From the story:
“These actions have caused the Gautreauxs to suffer humiliation and mental anguish, particularly because they do not know who has seen these photographs or may see them in the future,” Allred told reporters.
Claire Gautreux says the lawsuit is to make sure that this does not happen to anyone else.
This is now the second dealership that has made news this year for allegedly using nude photos of a customer. What kind of customer retention handbook are these guys using?
(H/T to Jeff. P!)