A prisoner who orchestrated a daring, intricate Southern Californian jailbreak in 2016 was found guilty of organizing the escape on Thursday but was cleared of kidnapping a cab driver while running from justice, according to authorities.
In Newport Beach, California, on August 16, 2019, Hossein Nayeri pays attention to the judge during his trial. (Photo: Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register)
According to a statement from the district attorney’s office, jurors in Orange County Superior Court also found Hossein Nayeri, 44, of Newport Beach guilty of the Southern Californian jailbreak but exonerated him of lesser charges such as abduction during a carjacking.
A week-long manhunt was launched after Nayeri and two other men managed to escape from the Orange County Central Prison Complex in Santa Ana on January 22, 2016.
In their maximum-security dorm cell, they allegedly used smuggled tools to Southern Californian jailbreak through a metal grating, according to the authorities and a smartphone video filmed by Nayeri. They then scaled plumbing shafts inside the walls to the roof, where they used a rope made of bedsheets to rappel down five storeys.
The men then abducted an unlicensed 72-year-old taxi driver. While driving the men around, the driver was occasionally held at gunpoint. According to investigators, after robbing a van, the Southern Californian jailbreak traveled hundreds of miles north to the San Francisco Bay Area in both vehicles and with the driver inside.
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Authorities claim that one escapee, Bac Tien Duong, then fled with the driver back to Southern California out of concern that he would be killed.
A guy who recognized Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu from news coverage led to their arrest in San Francisco the next day, according to the prosecution.
In 2021, Duong was found guilty of kidnapping and escapology. Prosecutors stated that Tieu is awaiting trial for the escape.
Accusations that Nayeri and two companions abducted, tortured, and dismembered a marijuana store owner in 2012 were pending trial at the time of his escape. Prosecutors claim that the robbers wrongly assumed the owner had hidden $1 million in the Mojave Desert when they abducted him from his Newport Beach house.
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Prosecutors claim that before the robbers escaped, the victim was burned with a blowtorch, stunned with a Taser, and eventually had his penis severed.
Nayeri fled to Iran. But he was eventually apprehended and extradited to the Czech Republic. He received a life sentence without the chance of parole in 2020.
Co-defendants of Southern Californian jailbreak Nayeri were also found guilty.
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