Lewisburg man faces felony charges over workplace recordings

A former Majik Rent-to-Own employee in Lewisburg faces felony charges after Pennsylvania State Police say he recorded co-workers without their consent and passed at least one recording along to company leadership. The case puts a Union County workplace dispute squarely into the criminal courts, with privacy, consent and criminal liability now at the center of the story.

Investigators charged William Frances Mitch, 44, of Montandon, after concluding that the recordings involved multiple felonies tied to unlawful interception and disclosure of communications. The allegations center on activity inside the Lewisburg store, giving the case a direct local footprint even though Mitch lives in neighboring Northumberland County. The charging report was filed June 13.

Pennsylvania law is what gives the case its legal weight. Under the state wiretap statute, intentionally intercepting, disclosing or using wire, electronic or oral communications is a third-degree felony. The law also reaches beyond the act of recording itself and can cover sharing the contents of a recording when the person knew or had reason to know it was unlawfully captured. Pennsylvania is generally treated as an all-party consent state for audio recording, which means people typically must agree before a conversation is recorded.

The alleged conduct matters in a place like Lewisburg because small employers often depend on close working relationships and a shared expectation of privacy. Majik Rent-to-Own’s Lewisburg store is at 125 AJK Boulevard, and the company says it operates multiple Pennsylvania locations, including Lewisburg and Sunbury, along with other markets such as Lancaster, Harrisburg, York, Lebanon, Lewistown, Columbia and Huntingdon. That broader footprint makes the case more than an isolated personnel dispute at one storefront.

For Union County, the episode is a reminder that a workplace disagreement can quickly become a felony matter when recording laws are involved. The central questions now are how the recordings were made, what they contained and how investigators will prove intent, but the immediate impact is already clear: a Lewisburg business says its workers were recorded without permission, and state police treated the allegations as serious criminal conduct.