Houston man charged after hidden phone found in Heights cafe bathroom

A hidden phone disguised to look like part of the trash inside the Dandelion Cafe in the Heights led Houston police to charge Roman Brewington, 31, of Atlanta, with felony invasive visual recording. Employees called 911 after a young woman spotted the device in the restroom area, and the discovery quickly turned a routine lunch stop into a criminal case.

Police said the incident began Monday when a group of men came into the restaurant. By about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, an officer was called to the cafe after a suspicious event was reported. Investigators believe the phone recorded at least two women, including the complaining witness.

Court records identify Brewington as an IRS employee. Investigators said Brewington cooperated but was not truthful when questioned. He told officers he had dropped the phone accidentally, but police later reviewed the device and said they saw video of him placing it in the bathroom. Brewington bonded out after the charge, and a court order barred him from using video-recording devices while the case moved ahead.

Texas Penal Code Section 21.15 makes invasive visual recording a state jail felony when someone records a person in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy without consent and with intent to invade privacy. The law specifically covers bathrooms and other private spaces, and it defines intimate areas to include genitals, the pubic area, the anus, buttocks and a female breast.

For small businesses, the case showed how quickly a restroom complaint can turn into a law-enforcement response when a customer notices something that does not belong. In this case, the key warning sign was not a camera hidden in plain sight but a phone disguised as trash, found before staff could discover it on their own.

Dandelion Cafe owner Sarah Lieberman said Brewington and the men he was with were no longer welcome at any of the restaurant’s locations. The episode also fit a broader pattern in Houston, where a former Lupe Tortilla employee was sentenced to one year in prison in a separate restroom-recording case and another case surfaced at Bad Astronaut Brewing in 2025.