Scorned Facebook Lover Pleads Guilty To Making Bogus Threat To Airline
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A Temple City woman apparently angry about being dumped on Facebook by a Frenchman with whom she had a fling pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal charge for calling an airline and implying that her ex-lover might damage a plane departing from Los Angeles International Airport.
Lizet Sariol, 45, entered her plea to a single felony count of conveying false and misleading information, specifically, implying that a United Airlines flight was endangered.
Sentencing is set for May 7, at which time Sariol might be eligible for a diversion program, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter indicated.
Asked by the judge if she was indeed guilty of the charge, Sariol quietly replied, "Yes, I am."
The charge stems from an anonymous call Sariol acknowledged placing about 2 a.m. on Sept. 25 to a United call center in Detroit, reporting that a Frenchman and his friends, all of whom have Arabic surnames, posed an unspecified threat to a flight scheduled to depart that day from LAX to Las Vegas and then on to Paris, according to court papers.
FBI agents intercepted the group at LAX, at which time the Frenchman, Adnen Mansouri, said he knew he expected to be stopped by airport authorities as a result of being "harassed" by Sariol, court papers show.
Mansouri told investigators that he'd had a four-night fling with Sariol while vacationing in Los Angeles, but had broken it off just hours before he was due to return to Paris from LAX.
The Frenchman and his friend, Salim Oumahdi, told FBI Special Agent David Gates they had been receiving threatening texts and Facebook postings from the woman in the preceding few hours, Gates wrote in an affidavit.
Mansouri said he believed Sariol was angry because he "un-friended" her on Facebook, the affidavit states.
One text Sariol apparently sent before Mansouri's intended departure said, "Don't even try to get on the plane (I) called the fbi Sucks to be all of you hope you all have good attorneys," according to court papers.
Investigators who interviewed Sariol at a coffee shop in early October said she claimed she "freaked out" when her ex-lover kicked her out of the Beverly Hills house where he was staying the night before his return flight to Europe.
"I'm very sorry," Sariol told the FBI interviewer, according to the charging document.
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