Readers may remember that Rauf was initially arrested in December when he was found to be filming, using a pinhole camera, women in dressing rooms in several Northern Virginia malls. Rauf in December
My original post is here. Note his photo then and now!
That post of mine is the most read post so far at my new Frauds and Crooksblog!
And, by the way, I still see no mention of Rauf’s nationality or immigration status. Do you?
From an e-mail alert yesterday to citizens of Northern Virginia. (hat tip: Cathy)
Three new victims (of over 100!) have come forward and police have put out this new appeal in an attempt to find more of the women who can be seen on Rauf’s images.
Detectives from our Major Crimes Bureau have identified three additional victims recorded in dressing rooms over the holidays. Over 100 videos were found on the phone of 39-year-old Mumtaz Rauf. Rauf, of Alexandria, was arrested for unlawful filming of a minor December 24th after officers were called to the Forever 21 clothing store based on a complaint by an observant teenage girl. Rauf is now facing three new charges for unlawful videotaping, two class one misdemeanors and one felony. This is after detectives were able to identify two adult female victims and one additional female juvenile victim.In all three cases, the victims contacted our Department through our hotline and texting option after believing they may have been recorded in December. Rauf now (did his attorneys tell him to clean up?)
Rauf was arrested at two this afternoon and taken to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center where he is being held on $7,000 bond. We are working in close coordination with the Office of the Commonwealth Attorney, and will continue to update them on our investigation. We are asking for anyone to contact us who was shopping at Forever 21, Gap, H&M, and Old Navy between December 15th and 24th at Fair Lakes Promenade, Fair Oaks Mall, Springfield Town Center, and Tysons Corner Center.
More than 289 community members have reached out to us since we first setup the hotline January 3rd. Detectives still want to speak to anyone who was potentially videotaped. We did have a brief technical glitch with our hotline. If you tried to reach us and were unsuccessful, we ask you please try again as detectives strive to identify all victims in this case.
Phone: 703-246-4600
Text: 703-718-5806
Email: fcpdtaskforce@fairfaxcounty.gov
For ongoing updates, please read our blog and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @FairfaxCountyPD.
Kind of creepy to think about!
Ladies, you need to be as watchful as that first teen was, and check those dressing rooms carefully before you take off your clothes!
I’m only guessing, but I suspect Rauf’s films have been, or would have been, sold.
What can you do? Get this story out widely to alert other women about creepy perverts like Rauf. And, if you live in the area and know which high schools/colleges are nearby, one of my readers suggested that the police announcement should be sent to those schools.
Thanks to a reader for sending this news from the Associated Press. Photo: No excuse for child brides in Europe! (Not in US either!) https://www.thedailybeast.com/theres-no-excuse-for-child-brides-in-europe
Did you know that our LEGAL immigration system allows children, mostly girls, to be exploited through a form of immigration that allows old men to import child brides?
And, it allows children in the US to bring in ‘husbands’ much older than themselves.
Frankly, I don’t see any defense for this flaw in our immigration system, and it seems it could easily be fixed through administrative action immediately, and ultimately by Congress when those do-nothings get around to doing something. From the AP (emphasis is mine):
WASHINGTON — Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press.
In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.
The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Actdoes not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives. [What the heck! Why should we consider the legality of the arrangement in their home country! Whiff of creeping sharia here?—ed] Fraidy Reiss of Unchained at Last is working to end child marriage. http://www.unchainedatlast.org/
[….]
There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report. Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.
[….]
The data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and then-Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the committee’s top Democrat. Johnson said it took a year to get the information, showing there needs to be a better system to track and vet the petitions.
“Our immigration system may unintentionally shield the abuse of women and children,” the senators said in the letter.
[….]
The head of USCIS, L. Francis Cissna, said in a letter to the committee that its request had raised questions and discussion within the agency on what it can do to prevent forced minor marriages.
The agency noticed some issues in how the data was collected and has resolved them. Officials also created a flagging system that requires verification of the birthdate whenever a minor is detected. The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions.
Just now when I was tweeting about how everyone should be calling their members of Congress and Senators today (even the Dems!) to demand they fund the President’s wall, I noted that my top tweet of the last month was one about a Chinese sex trafficking ring operating in New Hampshire and Maine.
The poor young girls were brought to the US on tourist visas and literally held prisoner by their Chinese pimps.
From the New Hampshire Union Leader:
MANCHESTER — Two homes in the city — one in a middle-class neighborhood — were used as houses of prostitution in a sex trafficking ring that involved as many as two dozen Chinese women under the control of a Concord couple, federal prosecutors said Friday. Police raid house of prostitution
Neighbors of 87 Harrington Ave. — on a quiet residential street within earshot of Our Lady of the Cedars Church — said they had been complaining for two years about the operation. On Thursday, Manchester police and sheriff deputies used battering rams on the door and took away at least one Asian woman.
“Merry Christmas. For two years we’ve been waiting. Now our kids can come out and play,” said a woman who lived across the street who did not want to be identified.
[….]
….federal officials in Maine announced the indictment of a Concord couple and charged them with running the sex ring spanning Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Other sites of prostitution listed included hotels in Dover, Portsmouth and Kittery, where Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is located.
Multiple locations in the Portland, Maine area were also cited.
Sou Chao Li and Derong Maio, both 37, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in interstate transportation and travel for prostitution; two counts of sex trafficking by fraud and coercion; and five counts of interstate transportation for prostitution. Li also is charged with possessing a victim’s passport as part of the sex trafficking scheme.
[….]
Neighbors of the Harrington Avenue home, nearly all of whom did not want to be identified, said they have been enduring traffic all hours of the day and night for years. They said middle-aged white men typically, many in SUVs and pickups, drive to the neighborhood, park on the street, enter the house and leave after 10 or 15 minutes. Some would wait in the car while another man was in the house.
“Sometimes they’d show up at my door,” one neighbor said. “I’d say ‘you guys looking for STDs? Go next door.’” [STD=Sexually Transmitted Diseases].
There is much more to the story, click here to read it all.
Here is what I want to know, did no one who reviews tourist visas from China notice any trend? We never hear about the details of that process. Was there fraud going on at the US Embassy in China?
My headline is the headline of an e-mail alert sent out to residents of Northern Virginia after the arrest of 39-year-old Mumtaz Rauf for allegedly filming a teenage girl in a Fairfax mall dressing room.
See my earlier posthere. Quoting from the alert (hat tip: Cathy):
Detectives are asking for the public’s help identifying victims from video recordings found on the phone of 39-year-old Mumtaz Rauf. Rauf was arrested December 24th for the unlawful filming of a minor at the Forever 21 store in Fair Oaks Mall.
Detectives have been working diligently since Rauf’s arrest to identify the victims, as well as the stores where the unlawful recordings took place. So far, we’ve found approximately 60 female victims on over 100 videos in fitting rooms from Rauf’s cell phone, with several of them appearing to be juveniles.
The videos we’ve recovered were taken between December 15th and December 24th.
Currently we know some of the recordings took place at Forever 21 and H&M at Fair Oaks Mall. We also believe some of the videos may have been taken at the Fair Lakes Old Navy. It is still very early in the investigation and there are more stores in the videos that have yet to be identified.
So far the locations and approximate time frames we have been able to identify are:
December 22, 2018:
1:15pm – 2:10pm, Fair Lakes Old Navy
2:50pm – 3:20pm, Fair Oaks Mall H&M
3:40pm – 4:15pm, Fair Oaks Mall Forever 21
4:25pm – 5:45pm, Fair Oaks Mall H&M
December 24, 2018:
12:30pm – 2:00pm, Fair Oaks Mall Forever 21 and H&M
There is also a time period from 9:15pm-10:00pm on December 22 where we believe he was possibly at the H&M and Old Navy at Tysons Corner Center.
[….]
There were other inappropriate video recordings found on Rauf’s phone, including several videos where he secretly filmed up a woman’s skirt. Detectives continue to analyze evidence in an effort to positively identify all the victims and the locations where the crimes occurred.
[….] We are also investigating whether illegal images have been shared or placed on the internet.
[….]
Rauf is currently behind bars with no bond on unrelated drug charges.
[….]
We’ve set up a dedicated phone line at 703-246-4600 for anyone who thinks they may have been filmed by Rauf in a fitting room between December 15th and December 24th.
Imagine seeing those dates, times and places and knowing you were in a dressing room there at that very time and that your image might be being viewed around the world.
Ladies, I assume you will be examining the walls of every dressing room you enter probably forever!
Fairfax County Police held a press conference yesterday afternoon. If I learn more, I’ll update this post.
As is to be expected, there is no information about Rauf’s nationality or immigration status, surely the police have that information, so why not tell the public?
Ladies beware!
The “man,” Mumtaz Rauf, 39, was arrested at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia after a sharp-eyed teen saw what looked like a camera peeping down at her while she was trying on clothes in a mall shop. Mumtaz Rauf
The incident is alleged to have happened at Forever 21 in the late afternoon of Christmas eve.
The girl reported her fear about someone possibly filming her to a store clerk who then spotted a man hurrying from the store.
Rauf was arrested in a dressing room in another store a short time later. NBC Washingtonreported (see the video too!) that when police arrived Rauf had a pinhole camera on him, some black tape and a Bluetooth transmitter.
Rauf “was charged with unlawful filming of a minor, which is a felony because of the victim’s age,” continued the NBC report. Rauf’s tools of the trade from INSIDENOVA story
Rauf was previously a bartender in Alexandria and had been profiled almost a year ago to the day in the Old Town Crier.
In the interview Rauf was asked, “How did you get started in the bartending business?”
His reply: “High hopes of money, women and fame.” (Hmmm!)
Fairfax County Police believe that this was not a one-time event, so if you think you may have been filmed in a dressing room at Fair Oaks Mall, call police at 703-591-0966.
The story was reported by other local news outlets here and here.
There is no mention of Rauf’s nationality or immigration status in any of the reports.
What can you do? Get this story out widely to alert other women about creepy perverts like Rauf. And, if you live in the area and know which high schools/colleges are nearby, one of my readers suggested that the police announcement should be sent to those schools.
