A driver for Uber and Lyft in Missouri used a webcam to secretly record unsuspecting customers — then broadcast the footage on the internet for the world to see.
Jason Gargac, 32, of St. Louis posted online nearly 700 rides, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
After the paper outed Gargac, Uber suspended his account, and Lyft booted him from the service.
Every visible and audible detail of hundreds of trips in his Chevrolet pickup — passengers’ faces, conversations and drop-off locations — were streamed on the Microsoft MSFT, +1.79% -owned website Twitch.
“I feel violated. I’m embarrassed,” said one passenger tracked down by the broadsheet, who asked not to be identified. “We got in an Uber at 2 a.m. to be safe, and then I find out that because of that, everything I said in that car is online and people are watching me. It makes me sick.”
Gargac told the Dispatch that he was just capturing “natural interactions between myself and the passengers — what a Lyft and Uber ride actually is.”
But in the videos, he sometimes offered a darker rationale.
“This better be [expletive] content, I swear to God. This better be [expletive] content, that’s all I’m saying,” Gargac said as two women approached his truck, after going half-an-hour without a customer. “I mean, the blond girl looks kind of cute, if they’re together. The blonde is cute. The one who ordered is not.”
The two jumped in the car, unaware their trip is about to be streamed online.
“I really have this issue of telling Uber drivers my whole life story,” one of the women tells the creepy driver.
“It’s OK,” Gargac replies, laughing.
The Post-Dispatch reported that traffic to Gargac’s channel picked up, and disgusting jokes filled the chat.
“Someone,” the paper noted, “claims dibs on the blonde.”
