A Chicago-area man is the creep behind the secret nude video tapes made of sexy ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews undressing in her hotel room, according to the FBI.
The feds arrested Michael David Barrett, 48, of West mont, Ill., yesterday on charges of interstate stalking, officials said. He was arrested at O’Hare International Air port after a trip from Buffalo.
Barrett allegedly doctored the peepholes in two of the hotel rooms Andrews stayed at while on assignment around the country — and made creepy cellphone vid eos of her which he allegedly posted on the Internet.
The suspect — who also goes by the name Mark Ben nett — allegedly tried to sell the videos to a celebrity Web site.
Andrews told the FBI being a voyeur victim and being ex posed on the Internet was a horrific experience.
“As a result of the incident, [Andrews] did not sleep well and had constant anxiety,” she said, according to the criminal complaint.
“In addition, [Andrews] was having trouble breathing and felt sick all of the time. She was concerned there might be more video and wanted to vomit just thinking about it.”
The bodacious blonde said the background in several of the tapes appeared to be in side the Nashville Marriott, where she stayed on Sept. 4, 2008, while covering a sport ing event, according to a criminal complaint.
When an FBI agent went there in August, he found that the front door peephole of her room had been tampered with.
“The inner eyepiece of the peephole screws into the sleeve for the peephole,” the agent wrote. “The eyepiece had been tampered with and was shortened, and it appeared to have been hack-sawed.”
According to hotel records, Barrett was staying in the room next to Andrews — under his own name — at the same time she was there.
The FBI said he even asked “specifically for a room next to [Andrews].”
The complaint also says the FBI believes he used a cellphone camera to record the video. All told, seven videos were recorded at that hotel and another was recorded at a different hotel.
The complaint said the videos were later offered for sale to the TMZ news Web site. TMZ said yesterday it turned down the offer.
The feds traced the contact phone of the person who offered the videos to TMZ back to Barrett. The trace was made through an e-mail address which was used to make the sale.
The FBI later found that both Andrews and Barrett stayed at the Radisson Airport hotel in Milwaukee. They again found the peephole to the room hacked off like the one in Nashville.
Barrett, whose home was searched yesterday, is expected to be arraigned in Chicago federal court today.
The FBI also made it clear that Andrews “did not have anything to do with the video being made nor with their being posted to the Internet and was not aware who had done it.”