California jailbreak mastermind sentenced for daring escape

A man serving a life sentence for kidnapping and mutilating a marijuana dispensary owner has been given extra time to plan a daring, elaborate escape from a Southern California prison

Mar 24, 2023 7:07pm ET

• 3 minutes read

SANTA ANA, Calif. — A man serving a life sentence for kidnapping and mutilating a marijuana dispensary owner was sentenced Friday to an additional sentence for plotting a daring, elaborate escape from a Southern California prison.

Hossein Nayeri, 44, was sentenced to a maximum of two years and eight months in state prison for escaping the Orange County Men’s Central Jail in Santa Ana on Jan. 22, 2016 and stealing a van while fleeing.

Nayeri and two other men used smuggled tools to cut the 1/2-inch-thick bars on a metal grid in their maximum-security cell, then climbed through installation shafts inside the walls to reach the roof, where they rappeled down five stories with a rope made of bedding, according to authorities, and a cell phone video shot by Nayeri.

The men then kidnapped a 72-year-old unlicensed tax driver at gunpoint and forced him to drive them away at gunpoint, prosecutors said.

For five days, the man drove the fugitives around as they fled, stopping at various motels as they took his car and a stolen van hundreds of miles north to San Jose, prosecutors said.

One fugitive, Bac Tien Duong, later feared the driver would be killed and fled with him back to Southern California, authorities said.

Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu were arrested in San Francisco the next day after a man recognized them from media reports, prosecutors said.

The taxi driver testified at Nayeri’s trial and credited Duong with saving his life. Nayeri was found guilty of prison break and van theft last week but acquitted of kidnapping, a charge that carried a potential life sentence.

Duong was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021 for escape and kidnapping. Tieu is awaiting trial for the escape, prosecutors said.

At the time of his prison break, Nayeri was awaiting trial on charges that he and two friends kidnapped, tortured and mutilated a marijuana dispensary owner in 2012. The owner and an acquaintance were kidnapped from a home in Newport Beach because robbers mistakenly believed he had buried $1 million in the Mojave Desert, prosecutors said.

He was beaten with rubber hoses, shocked with a taser, burned with a blowtorch and finally his penis was cut off before the robbers fled, prosecutors said. The money was never found.

Nayeri fled to Iran. But later he was caught in the Czech Republic and extradited. In 2020, he was sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole and a seven-year sentence for torture for kidnapping.

Nayeri’s co-defendants were also convicted.