An Orange County judge sentenced a former Uber driver to eight years in state prison and ordered him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life for sexually assaulting an intoxicated passenger he picked up from a Tustin police station in 2018. Orange County Superior Court Judge Kevin Haskins rejected probation for 51-year-old Amir Attia during Thursday's sentencing, finding that Attia poses a high risk of committing another sex crime.
Attia was convicted of two felony counts of sexual penetration of an intoxicated person, according to the Orange County Register. Judge Haskins also weighed Attia's prior 1993 conviction for misdemeanor sexual battery, which involved a mentally disabled woman, in determining that he posed too great a risk to the public for a lighter sentence, according to MyNewsLA.
The case traces back to July 22, 2018, when the victim, then 25, went drinking with coworkers at a Tustin bowling alley and a nearby restaurant, according to the Register. She drank apple cider and Fireball whiskey before crashing her car into a center median while driving home, per MyNewsLA. Tustin police arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence, with her blood-alcohol level later determined to be more than three times the legal limit, and surveillance footage showed her falling, staggering and struggling to walk straight, the Register reported.
Released at 2 a.m., Picked Up by Attia
Police released the woman from the Tustin station around 2 a.m., and she used the Uber app to get a ride home to Santa Ana — the ride Attia drove, according to the Register's reporting. That decision to release a severely intoxicated woman to order a rideshare home in the middle of the night has drawn scrutiny as part of the broader case, underscoring questions about police procedures for releasing vulnerable individuals into ride-hailing situations.
Prosecutor Elise Levy told jurors the woman was alone with Attia in the car and unable to protect herself, per the Register. The prosecution argued she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual encounter. Forensic evidence later matched Attia's DNA to saliva found on the woman's left breast, and she underwent a sexual assault examination at UC Irvine Medical Center and Anaheim Regional Medical Center the day after the assault, according to the Los Angeles Times.
An 18-Month Gap Before Arrest
That DNA evidence did not yield a match until January 2020, roughly 18 months after the assault, explaining the lengthy gap between the crime and Attia's arrest. Santa Ana police arrested Attia on January 8, 2020, two days after receiving the formal DNA hit, per the Times. Notably, Attia had arranged an electronic tip for himself on the Uber app after dropping the woman off, prosecutors revealed during trial, according to MyNewsLA.
Attia gave conflicting statements to police in May 2019 and January 2020 before ultimately admitting to sexual contact, MyNewsLA reported. He initially denied any physical contact before claiming the woman had instigated the encounter herself. Defense attorney Ed Welbourn argued at trial that the woman made sexual advances toward Attia, and later told the court that his client's actions were morally and ethically wrong but not criminal, according to the Register.
At sentencing, Welbourn presented psychological reports rating Attia as low-risk along with character letters from family and church leaders in an effort to secure probation instead of state prison time, per MyNewsLA. The court ruled that evidence was outweighed by Attia's history of sexual assault, which included his 1983 admission to touching another person's intimate part against their will for sexual arousal, according to the Register.
Why a Decades-Old Conviction Didn't Block Him
Attia's decades-old misdemeanor conviction did not automatically disqualify him from driving for Uber in 2018 because of how California's rideshare background-check law is written. Under California Public Utilities Code § 5445.2, transportation network companies must run background checks that impose a lifetime exclusion for registered sex offenders and violent felons, but disqualifications tied to non-violent misdemeanor convictions only look back seven years, according to FindLaw. Those rules were established under California Assembly Bill 1289 in 2016.
Attia's felony conviction now carries its own consequences under state law. A conviction for felony sexual penetration of an intoxicated person under California Penal Code § 289 carries a maximum penalty of eight years in state prison and requires registration under the California Sex Offender Registration Act, per FindLaw. Tier 2 and Tier 3 offenders under that law must maintain multi-decade or lifetime registration with local law enforcement.
Uber deactivated Attia's driver account in 2018 immediately after receiving a report of the sexual assault, roughly 18 months before Santa Ana police made their arrest, according to CBS Los Angeles. The company said it cooperated fully with police following the rider's report. Uber and other rideshare companies have argued that more than 99 percent of trips occur without incident, the Register noted.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Litigation
The case adds to mounting legal pressure facing the ride-hailing giant nationwide. As of June 2026, Uber faces thousands of consolidated federal and state lawsuits alleging corporate negligence in screening drivers and protecting passengers from sexual assault, with a federal jury awarding $8.5 million in an Arizona bellwether case earlier this year. Hoodline previously reported on a shareholder suit over Uber's safety oversight and on a separate case involving a Doral driver accused of drugging a passenger.
Uber's own safety disclosures show reported sexual assault incidents on its U.S. platform dropped from 5,981 in 2017–2018 to 2,717 in 2021–2022, though passenger advocates say more safeguards are still needed. A 2025 New York Times investigation found Uber received a report of a sexual assault almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022, per the Register. The exact scope of sexual assault reports across the rideshare industry as a whole remains unclear.
