A Buffalo Grove man who faces criminal charges for allegedly filming minors in the restroom of his Addison ice cream shop has also been accused of using another hidden camera in his home bathroom to secretly record a naked teenage girl, part of a pattern of sexually-exploitive acts involving minors, according to a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court on Tuesday.
Steven Weisberg, 58, used a variety of predatory tactics to “scheme to manipulate and groom minor girls for sexual exploitation” through his ice cream business, Flavor Frenzy, according to the lawsuit. The complaint was filed by a 19-year-old woman identified as Jane Doe, who was a minor when she worked at the shop. The lawsuit against Weisberg and the business seeks damages of more than $50,000 for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Illinois Gender Violence Act.
“This sordid pattern of misconduct has been going on for three or four years,” attorney Richard Pullano of Pullano & Siporin, the law firm representing Doe, said in a statement. “This man’s deception of his own employees and others for his own personal sexual gratification is atrocious. The premeditation and preparation involved in carefully setting up the cameras — which we’ve now learned happened in more than one location — makes it all the more chilling.”
An attorney for Weisberg did not immediately return Tribune requests for comment.
In 2022, Doe applied to work at Flavor Frenzy after seeing a job posting for the ice cream shop on a bulletin board at her high school. The business advertised for employees at Addison Trail High School’s “job bulletin board” and job fairs, in addition to posting seasonal job openings at York Community High School in Elmhurst, according to the complaint.
She was one of 13 or 14 high school girls who worked there at the time, assisting in both the brick-and-mortar Addison store as well as at festivals and pop-up events, the lawsuit said.
During that summer and beyond, Weisberg sexually exploited Doe and other minors by “befriending them, offering them drugs and alcohol inappropriate conversations and forcible touching,” according to the complaint.
For summer events, Weisberg added to the menu a “lemon shakeup” drink where customers could add a flavor to lemonade and high school girl employees would then “shake up” the beverage in front of the customers, according to the complaint.
In summer 2024, Weisberg told Doe that “he wanted to hire high school girls with ‘large breasts’ and have them wear Flavor Frenzy shirts with a ‘v-cut’ neckline to make the lemonade shakeups” to attract more customers and tips, the lawsuit said.
The complaint said Weisberg told Doe that she “did not qualify to be one of the lemonade shakeup girls because her breasts were not big enough.”
In August 2024, Weisberg told Doe that they should play pickleball at a court across the street from his Buffalo Grove home before working at a summer festival that evening, according to the complaint. He told her if she became sweaty, she could shower at his house prior to going to work, the lawsuit said.
Weisberg added that “the shower was in his daughter’s bathroom, his daughter may be home,” the complaint said.
Doe reluctantly agreed to play pickleball with him and shower at his home, not knowing there was a hidden camera in Weisberg’s bathroom, the lawsuit said.
Unbeknownst to Doe, that camera recorded her with no clothes on, according to the lawsuit.
In January, when Weisberg had a hernia near his groin he “suddenly and forcibly grabbed (Jane Doe’s) hand and held it near his groin for her to feel the ‘bump’” of the hernia, the complaint said.
The lawsuit also alleges that Weisberg offered Doe alcohol and marijuana gummies while working a festival alone with her on multiple occasions. When she declined saying she did not like marijuana gummies or the taste of alcohol, he “started bringing a case of Smirnoff Ice to the summer festivals, (saying) they taste the least like alcohol,” and adding that he wouldn’t tell anyone, the complaints states.
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At one point, she finally agreed to try a marijuana gummy that he provided at the Addison store, the lawsuit states.
In August, Weisberg was arrested by the Addison Police Department for allegedly recording videos of women and two female minors in the restroom of the ice cream shop.
Police began investigating the business after receiving an anonymous tip about “what appeared to be a fake wall electrical outlet in the shop’s restroom,” authorities said. An undercover officer discovered an outlet there with a small black lens positioned to capture portions of the bathroom, according to police.
The investigation revealed that Weisberg had allegedly installed the camera a few years ago, and that he was able to access and save the video footage from the camera on his laptop and cellphone, according to authorities.
Several female shop employees who were minors reported that Weisberg allegedly asked them to model Flavor Frenzy T-shirts for the business and had told them to remove their bras “so that there was no bra outline in the photos,” Addison police said.
A search warrant for Weisberg’s electronic devices uncovered 11 videos in a folder for deleted media in his phone, showing six different people, records show. At least three of them were employees at the ice cream shop, according to authorities. One was a 16-year-old trying on different Flavor Frenzy T-shirts to model for the business, allegedly at Weisberg’s request, according to prosecutors.
A DuPage County judge last month denied pretrial release for Weisberg, who was charged with two counts of child pornography, a Class X felony, and two counts of unauthorized video recording, a Class 3 felony.
As part of the investigation, Addison police recovered from Weisberg’s computer images of Doe inside the bathrooms of both Flavor Frenzy and Weisberg’s home, according to the lawsuit, which seeks damages of more than $50,000.
Doe’s “mental and emotional state has been shattered by these discoveries,” Pullano said in the statement.
“As she revisits the sequence of events, she feels intense anger and sadness,” he said.
Weisberg’s next court appearance in DuPage County is scheduled for Friday.