“Jeopardy!” champion Philip Joseph “Joey” DeSena has been arrested on two charges of felony secret peeping.
“Jeopardy!” viewers will remember DeSena, 42, for his two victories in November 2024, when he walked away with $44,698. The development engineer returned for the Champions Wildcard Tournament in January , competing for a spot in the Tournament of Champions. He made it to the semifinals before losing to Drew Goins and Jen Feldman.
DeSena was arrested in his home state of North Carolina on Monday, Dec. 1, according to Entertainment Weekly. Authorities accused him of “unlawfully” and “wilfully” installing a secret camera in a bathroom to capture the image of another person without their consent. The warrant alleges that the crime was committed on Oct. 10. DeSena’s first court appearance is set for Wednesday, Dec. 10.
While DeSena’s “Jeopardy!” episodes were airing, he often commented on the game show’s subreddit. In one post, he revealed that he gave the answer “Lorelai” during one Final Jeopardy as a shout-out to his daughter.
“I normally am not a ‘write a shoutout during FJ’ person, but I figured that with this gift of being on the Alex Trebek stage again, I wanted to send a message to my 4-month-old daughter, Lorelei, so that she might see it years in the future and smile,” DeSena wrote at the time.
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DeSena is not the first “Jeopardy!” champion to face legal trouble. In March, Winston Nguyen was sentenced to seven years in prison after he posed as a teenager on Snapchat to solicit explicit videos and photos from children. He pleaded guilty to one count of use of a child in a sexual performance as a sexually motivated felony and five counts of endangering the welfare of a child, per AP.
Nguyen appeared on two “Jeopardy!” episodes in 2014, winning his first match. He was also arrested in 2017 after stealing $300,000 from a 96-year-old blind man and his 92-year-old wife. He served four months at Rikers Island for the crime, per The New York Times.
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