Authorities Friday were seeking a 36-year-old man convicted of attacking a girlfriend and charged with sexually assaulting a slumbering woman at a Newport Beach party.
A fugitive warrant was issued Thursday for Siamack Reza Yaghobi when he failed to appear in court.
He is charged with assault with the intent to commit a sex offense in a burglary, sexual penetration of an unconscious victim and oral copulation of an unconscious victim, all felonies. He also faces sentencing enhancements for committing an offense while out on bail for another offense.
Yaghobi was accused of sneaking upstairs at a party Jan. 6, 2025 to sexually assault a woman who went to bed in her boyfriend’s room, according to testimony from police at the defendant’s preliminary hearing. The woman woke up and realized she was being assaulted, prompting her to cover herself and dash to a bathroom, where she locked herself up in, police said.
The boyfriend confronted the defendant, who was not previously acquainted with the victim, and kicked him out of the house, police said. Video surveillance caught the alleged attack.
Yaghobi pleaded guilty July 17, 2023 to a felony count of corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant. Two other counts of the same crime were dismissed.
Yaghobi was sentenced to 274 days in jail, or time already served in the case, and ordered to participate in a batterers’ treatment program. He was placed on three years of formal probation, but had repeated alleged violations of probation and was later sentenced to two years behind bars in April of last year and given credit at the time for 872 days behind bars.
Yaghobi admitted he had assaulted his girlfriend with a glass candlestick in Irvine. The victim alleged that he choked her five times and had punched her, probation officials said.
In a probation violation petition filed in November of 2023, it was reported he participated poorly in the batterers’ program and that he had been arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that month on suspicion of attempted rape, spousal assault with prior convictions and penetration with a foreign object.
In the Irvine domestic violence case, the defendant’s brother, Roshanack Yaghobi, who is an attorney, wrote a letter to a judge overseeing the case explaining that his sibling was 11 when their father died and was troubled by the loss.
“My brother has seen more death than just that of our father,” he wrote. “He’s been a witness and buried his best friend in high school who unfortunately was taken away as a result of a motor vehicle accident.”