Woman Allegedly Accuses Man With Arabic Surname Of Terrorist Plane Threat After He Ends 4-Day Fling
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A 45-year-old Temple City woman is accused of providing false information to an airline in order to take revenge on a male passenger with whom she had a four-day fling.
Lizet Sariol is expected to plead guilty Tuesday in a federal court.
She is charged with a single felony count of conveying false and misleading information, specifically, implying that a United Airlines flight was endangered, according to a signed plea agreement filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court.
The charge stems from an anonymous call Sariol reportedly placed Sept. 25 to a United Airlines call center in Detroit. It is alleged that she said a Frenchman and his friends, all of whom have Arabic surnames, posed an unspecified threat to a plane set to depart that day from Los Angeles International Airport to Las Vegas and then on to Paris, according to court papers.
FBI agents were dispatched to LAX to intercept the group.
During questioning, the Frenchman, Adnen Mansouri, said he expected to be detained by airport authorities because he was being "harassed" by Sariol, with whom he had a four-night affair, according to court papers.
Mansouri said he had broken off the relationship just hours before arriving at LAX.
The Frenchman and his friend, Salim Oumahdi, told FBI Special Agent David Gates they had received threatening texts and Facebook postings from the woman for 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 allegedly sent 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 in early October said she "freaked out" when her ex-lover kicked her out of the Beverly Hills house where he was staying the night before he was due to fly back to France.
"I'm very sorry," Sariol told the FBI interviewer, according to the charging document.
Sariol faces up to five years in prison or probation, a three-year period of supervised release and a possible fine of $250,000, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
She is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday before U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, who will set a sentencing date.
(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
