With a name like Buttercup, how could you not trust Kenneth Ryals?
One woman found out the hard way.
Ryals, an IRS agent, was ordered to pay a former female tenant over $400,000 after he allegedly secretly videotaped the woman for nearly a year, the Miami Herald reported.
Ryals, 60, was never charged criminally, but a jury decided his actions were certainly costly.
The victim, 27-year-old Miranda Goldston, said she was lured to Ryals in 2007 by an ad on Roommates.com. The ad was posted by Ryals under the screen name "Buttercup."
Buttercup had a furnished bedroom for rent in Davie.
What Goldston didn't know was Ryals had installed hidden cameras throughout the home and many were pointed toward her bedroom. One camera was hidden in the DVD/VCR player in Goldston's room.
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She didn't find the cameras until she was moving.
"It felt like being raped,'' Goldston's attorney, Patricia Wallace, told the Miami Herald. "What he did to her was extremely invasive."
Ryals has already lost that Davie house, but has not stopped searching for possible tenants on Roommates.com, Wallace said.
