Stalking ‘victim’ now facing felony charges in hoax
Rida Rustam, an 18-year-old Canton Township honor student, is facing multiple felony and misdemeanor charges after allegedly using threatening emails she sent to herself to implicate a student at Plymouth High School.
The victim of the hoax, Kumayl Raza, was exonerated after his attorney hired forensic cellphone expert Avery Thompson. The computer crimes investigator found evidence that the elaborate scheme was perpetrated by Rustam who sent sexually explicit and violent threats in texts, emails, notes and on Instagram to herself. In the escalating messages, she made it appear that Raza had threatened to shoot up the high school graduation ceremony, was sexually threatening and stalking her and threatened to violently murder her.
Raza was jailed twice due to the elaborate hoax and during one arrest was taken from a class at Plymouth High School in handcuffs. His friend, Ibraheem Haq, who was also implicated in sending the threatening messages, was arrested, charged with stalking and spent three nights in jail. Those charges have been dropped by the Wayne County Prosecutor after a review of forensic evidence proving neither Raza or Haq wrote or sent any of the criminal messages.
Thompson, examining an electronic trail left in Rustam’s two cell phones and I-pad, proved in a few hours that she had written and sent the messages to herself. “Within an hour, I saw her as a suspect, not a victim,” Thompson said. He added he was stunned at the level of sophistication demonstrated in the hoax.
"Law enforcement has to be very cautious about what is being presented to them as fact. ... I think this is going to occur more often as we integrate AI into our lives. This is kind of the dark side of AI,” Thompson said. The girl used an AI engine to perform a risk assessment of her actions and then bought a Virtual Private Network (VPN) from a provider in Mexico. She then used that network to shield her identity and location on Instagram, Thompson discovered.
Thompson said that was how she managed to dupe police investigators during a three-month investigation. He said local police do not have the expertise or technology to dismantle electronic communications to identify actual senders.
Plymouth Township police arrested Raza on graduation day and executed a warrant search at his home. As the search was taking place, Thompson spoke online with police and clearly demonstrated that the messages had not come from Raza, but rather from Rustam herself. Thompson said it was clear to investigators that the purported victim had “created all this chaos, not Kumayl.”
Police records indicate the motive may have been prompted by Rustam’s unrequited romantic interest in Raza and the subsequent removal of Rustam from membership in some student groups. While Raza and Rustam did not attend Plymouth High School, they were acquainted through their involvement in the Pakistani Muslim community and met at a homeless shelter where they each volunteered.
Rustam’s attorney, Mark Haider, claimed she had no ill intent and described her as an inexperienced and impressionable adolescent. He said she was “tremendously remorseful.” Rustam reportedly confessed to creating the elaborate ruse during a police interview. She told police she was angry at Raza and Haq for removing her from some student groups but reportedly did not sign a written confession.
Raza’s attorney, Michael Bullotta, said the entire Raza family has suffered tremendously during the entire investigation. Members of the Pakistani community began to shun the family and gossip among Raza’s fellow students was embarrassing and humiliating, Raza said.
"These people have been through hell," said Bullotta, a former federal prosecutor with extensive experience in computer fraud crimes and corruption. “The police were manipulated so badly here. My beef is that the police didn't just use common sense."
Rustam, arrested June 13, has been charged and arraigned on four felony counts of making a false report of a felony; six felony counts of using a computer to commit a crime; four counts of lying to a police officer and two counts of misdemeanor stalking. If convicted, punishments range from one to five years in prison on each count. She is free on an electronic tether and her next appearance in Circuit Court is scheduled for Aug. 26.
