Seattle man sentenced after terrorizing woman with campaign of ‘gruesome, violent’ threats

SEATTLE — A Seattle man who used to work as a privacy consultant was sentenced to prison after a vast cyberstalking campaign that included gruesome, violent threats and thousands of emails.

Sumit Garg, 33, was indicted in March 2021. Since then, he’s been held at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac.

In 2020, Garg began terrorizing a woman — who used to share an apartment with his wife — with threats, sexual messages, and posts, according to prosecutors.

Case records and testimony from Garg’s trial said he used his computer skills to torment the woman and people in her life, including her uncle, boyfriend, a Seattle Police detective who was investigating the threats, and even a deputy prosecuting attorney.

As the harrassment continued, its severity escalated in violence and included threats of rape, torture, and death. Thousands of emails were sent from numerous accounts he set up just for the purpose of cyberstalking.

Garg even took pictures of the lobby of the victim’s new apartment building and sent them to her as part of his “apparently insatiable desire to even the score,” prosecutors said.

When the victim reported Garg’s activities to police, Garg and his wife claimed they were the ones being harassed.

While he was in jail, Garg told his wife to send harassing emails to herself to make it appear that he was not the culprit. He also told her to get rid of the clothes he wore while in the lobby of the victim’s apartment building, where he was recorded by surveillance cameras.

Though his wife sent the emails, she did not destroy the clothes and eventually cooperated with authorities.

“… Garg took a simple rent dispute between roommates, and escalated it into a massive cyberstalking campaign against an ever-growing number of victims, making grotesque and violent threats that are almost impossible to fathom,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.

On Tuesday, Garg was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Seattle to nine years in prison for conspiracy to engage in cyberstalking, three counts of cyberstalking in violation of a criminal order, and three counts of cyberstalking.

The case was investigated by the United States Secret Service with help from the Seattle Police Department.

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