Royal Caribbean is facing more legal trouble after a former crew member admitted to spying on cruise passengers, including children, in their bathrooms and showers after planting small cameras in their cabins to record them in states of undress.

A dozen potential victims, represented by Coral Gables, Florida-headquartered Aronfeld Trial Lawyers, have sued Royal Caribbean and Arvin Mirasol, the cabin stateroom attendant, in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida in Miami in a complaint filed last week. A spokesperson for the cruise giant, also based in Miami, told the Miami Herald she had not yet been briefed on the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs aren’t named in court filings, but they live in Arkansas, Georgia, Texas and Missouri and were on board the Symphony of the Seas sometime between Dec. 1, 2023, and Feb. 26, 2024. One individual was on the cruise with her 2-year-old daughter.

Symphony of the Seas’ home port in the winter is Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. From there, it makes roughly one-week trips to the Caribbean.

The new lawsuit is one of at least four civil suits filed against the cruise giant since October, all by South Florida law firms, on behalf of the alleged victims of Mirasol, who pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge in June.

Latest of several lawsuits

On Oct. 15, a class-action civil lawsuit was filed in the same Miami federal court against Royal Caribbean Cruises and Mirasol. The plaintiff, called Jane Doe in the complaint and represented by the Coral Gables firm Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, was a passenger aboard Symphony of the Seas on or about Feb. 25, 2024. She’s a New Hampshire resident.

Leesfield & Partners filed a suit on Oct. 18 on behalf of another Jane Doe victim, a resident of Hawaii. Gerson & Schwartz filed lawsuits on behalf of three families from Virginia on Oct. 28.

One other Miami-area firm — Hickey Law Firm, which represents at least two families — also expects to file lawsuits.

Only one case, the Lipcon one, is class action. Yet it’s possible the multiple law firms could collaborate with each other, particularly during the discovery or the early part of litigation. The cases would likely remain separate.

What does Royal Caribbean say?

In March, after Mirasol was caught and arrested, Jonathon Fishman, then a spokesman for Royal Caribbean, told the Herald that “we immediately reported this to law enforcement and terminated the crew member, and we will continue to fully cooperate with authorities.”

In October, after the first lawsuit was filed, Heather Hust Rivera, chief communications officer of Royal Caribbean Group, said: “As this is pending litigation, we are unable to comment further at this time.”

In that class-action lawsuit, Royal Caribbean has so far requested and been granted time extensions to respond, according to court filings.

Jason Margulies, an attorney and partner with Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, told the Herald in an interview that in his conversations with Royal Caribbean, the cruise line indicated it will likely try to compel the plaintiffs to go to arbitration.

Origin of new lawsuit

Like the others, the latest lawsuit goes back to a federal and local investigation last year, led by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Federal agents and Broward County officers met Mirasol, a 34-year-old Philippines national, as the Symphony of the Seas returned to Port Everglades on March 3. During that cruise, he had admitted to ship security personnel to planting small cameras in passengers’ cabins after one guest had discovered one while in the bathroom, according to court documents. Royal Caribbean said it then notified federal authorities and had its security personnel detain him on the ship.

Searching his electronic equipment, including a USB stick device, law enforcement agents found “several videos of naked females undressing in their bathrooms,” according to court documents and a criminal complaint from the Broward Sheriff’s Office. One girl seemed to be 10 years old, they said.

In June, Mirasol pleaded guilty, and on Aug. 28, U.S. Judge Melissa Damian in Fort Lauderdale gave him the maximum possible sentence: 30 years in prison on a charge of producing child pornography.

Yet that has not brought closure. One outstanding question: how many victims there were. Ascertaining that hasn’t been easy.

As a stateroom attendant, Mirasol regularly cleaned passenger rooms, restocked towels and changed sheets on the ship, which carries 5,518 passengers and 2,200 crew members.

In his plea agreement, he admitted to placing cameras in guest room bathrooms “since he started working on Symphony of the Seas around December 2023.” That means he could have worked on 12 different cruises before the one where he was caught. Six of those would have been six-night cruises, and six were eight-night trips, according to Royal Caribbean’s published itinerary. All departed and returned to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale.

The class-action suit filed in October by Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman alleged there could be “up to 960 passengers” who are victims.

Spencer Aronfeld, an attorney and founder of Aronfeld Trial Lawyers, the firm behind the latest lawsuit, used the same estimate in his lawsuit but also thinks it might be more. “He could have easily had access to another cabin” beyond the ones he was assigned, Aronfeld said in an interview with the Herald.

Initially, the feds were notifying victims or possible victims, but once Mirasol pleaded guilty and was sentenced, their incentive to look for all other victims decreased, said Aronfeld, who conceded they have limited bandwidth and resources. They also have somewhat different objectives.

“Their mission is to secure a conviction,” said the attorney. “Mission accomplished. They’re like, ‘Let’s move on.’”

So, it’s really up to the cruise company to notify all possible victims. Aronfeld said because of calls he was getting from concerned cruise passengers, he tried to push Royal Caribbean to do that.

But to no avail, so far.

What bothers Aronfeld’s clients most “is that Royal Caribbean hasn’t reached out to any of them,” he said. “We have waited patiently for months.”

Like the other cases, a main allegation in the newest lawsuit is that passengers were recorded by Mirasol while “undressed and engaging in private activities” without knowledge. Some of their beds “were strangely propped up in their cabins and Mirasol behaved strangely and defensively when asked to lower the bed.” He also asked to change the room in the middle of the day.

The complaint says the defendant uploaded images of the victims to the internet, including the dark web. As a result, “plaintiffs suffer from severe emotional distress, which manifests physically, causing the Plaintiffs physical sickness, sweating, nausea, insomnia, dizziness, crying, and physical pain.”

Given the vastness of the internet and the dark web, they worry the images may never be found and removed. They “live in constant fear … that images of the Plaintiffs undressed while engaging in private activities are regularly viewed by others and used for illicit purposes.”

The complaint also says the cruise company failed to adequately vet Mirasol before hiring him or to sufficiently train and supervise him afterward.

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