A 61-year-old man living in California said he was wrongly accused of robbing a Sunglass Hut in Texas, arrested and then sexually assaulted by inmates after facial recognition software falsely identified him as the suspect.
On Jan. 22, 2022, two armed men allegedly threatened a store manager and associate and stole thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise from a Sunglass Hut in Houston, according to a lawsuit filed Jan. 18 in Harris County District Courts.
One of the men demanded all the money in the store while the other grabbed as many sunglasses as he could, the suit alleges. The manager and associate were then forced into the back of the store while the robbers fled.
The lawsuit accuses the head of loss prevention for EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Sunglass Hut, of using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software to identify Harvey Murphy Jr. as the suspect. It says that the companies “compared unclear security footage” to Murphy’s mugshots from the 1980s when he was convicted of non-violent burglaries.
But at the exact time of the robbery at Sunglass Hut, Murphy was 2,000 miles away in Sacramento, California, where he lived, the suit says.
The charges were ultimately dropped, but the damage had already been done.
“Mr. Murphy’s story is troubling for every citizen in this country,” Murphy’s attorney Daniel Dutko said in a statement. “Any person could be improperly charged with a crime based on error-prone facial recognition software just as he was.”
The suit says that Houston police were investigating the robbery. Detectives talked to the store employees, reviewed surveillance video, and found footage of the getaway car with stolen license plates, according to the lawsuit.
As detectives worked to find the suspects, the head of loss prevention for EssilorLuxottica called the department and said police “could stop their investigation because he found their guy,” the suit alleges.
“He stated that he worked in conjunction with Macy’s…
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