MINEOLA, N.Y. — A Brooklyn man has pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges after secretly recording patients — including a child — in bathrooms at a Nassau County sleep center where he worked, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Sanjai Syamaprasad, 47, admitted to installing a hidden camera disguised as a smoke detector inside bathrooms at the Northwell Health Sleep Disorders Center in Great Neck between July 2023 and April 2024. He pleaded guilty to five counts of unlawful surveillance in the second degree and two counts of tampering with physical evidence, all E felonies, before Judge Meryl Berkowitz.
Syamaprasad is expected to receive five years’ probation at his sentencing on September 15, 2025, though the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office had recommended a sentence of one to three years in prison on each count, served consecutively.
“Patients who enter medical facilities expect and deserve their privacy to be protected,” said District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly. “This defendant…violated the trust that patients hold in these institutions and the people who care for them with his sickening behavior.”
According to the DA’s office, Syamaprasad used Velcro to affix the camera to the walls of staff and patient bathrooms at the sleep center, as well as a public restroom at STARS Rehabilitation in the same building. He removed the device at the end of his shifts and transferred the footage to SD cards for viewing on his work computer.
Northwell Health discovered the misconduct and referred the matter to the district attorney’s office in April 2024. A subsequent search of Syamaprasad’s Brooklyn home led to the seizure of phones, laptops, and card readers.
Prosecutors said Syamaprasad attempted to destroy evidence by disposing of the camera and a broken SD card in a Brooklyn CVS trash bin. The camera was later recovered by Nassau County detectives.
The case is being prosecuted by Deputy Bureau Chief Patrick Brand of the Organized Crime and Rackets Bureau.
Sanjai Syamaprasad recorded hundreds of individuals in private bathrooms before being caught by a coworker and arrested in April.