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Washington County resident Ranjith Keerikkattil, of Catonsville, left the United States after being found guilty of stalking a junior co-worker before he was re-arrested four years later and sentenced to an 11-month prison term, US Attorney Matthew Graves and Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee announced.
Prosecutors said that Keerikkattil was found guilty of the stalking charge on July 9, 2018, following a trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and later released pending his sentencing by a judge, who ordered him to return to the courthouse the following morning to be outfitted for a GPS monitoring device.
Keerikkattil had other plans.
Instead, he failed to appear in court and left the US, ultimately settling in Australia, where he was a fugitive for the next four years until he was arrested on Thursday, Oct. 4 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and later sentenced to 11 months in prison for the stalking charge.
While he was gone, a grand jury indicted Keerikkattil on a felony charge of violating the Bail Reform Act, to which he pleaded not guilty. He faces trial on that charge beginning on Jan. 4, 2023.
The actions that led to the stalking conviction began in May 2015, when Keerikkattil was a senior consultant at a firm in Roslyn, Virginia. He was his victim's first mentor on her first project out of college, prosecutors said, and the two worked "countless evening and weekend hours on the project" at his discretion.
Eventually, Keerikkattil told his victim that he "only brought her into the project to get close to her and that he was merely giving her busy work,” ignoring her wishes to keep the relationship strictly professional while he continued to pursue her, officials said.
She eventually relented and reported Keerikkattil to the firm’s HR counselor.
Keerikkattil was fired on June 19, 2015, for which he blamed his victim and began a stalking campaign in retaliation that included a smear campaign on the Internet and mass emails to both she and former company employees “in order to seriously frighten and defame her.”
When she continued to ignore him, prosecutors said that Keerikkattil ramped up his efforts, tracking her to a cafe company employees were known to frequent, obtaining eye contact, further frightening her. He also continued to text her despite being warned not to by his victim’s attorney.
Prosecutors said that Keerikkattil also took a plane nearly 3,000 miles to Seattle, rented a car, and traveled three hours to pay an unannounced visit to his victim's family in a Portland suburb.
In that instance, he knocked on the door of her childhood home, where he asked his victim's father for directions to nearby parks in the area.
“It took a moment for the father to piece things together,” prosecutors said. “Once he was able to figure out who was at his door, he slammed and locked the door and called 911.
Keerikkattil texted the victim shortly thereafter, stating: “Was nice meeting your dad today,” leading to an arrest warrant and his subsequent apprehension on Dec. 19, 2015, when he was charged with stalking.
At the sentencing hearing, the court also considered a statement from another female victim who had claimed that Keerikkattil had stalked her in 2012 and 2013, where he filed similar lawsuits against her and “doxed” her on the Internet, according to prosecutors.
The Government referenced this prior alleged stalking behavior during its argument, drawing the court’s attention to the “striking similarities between the two victims and how Keerikkattil chose to torment them.”
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