3 Inmates Broke Out of a California Jail, Kidnapped a Taxi Driver and Went on the Run for 1 Week

Months of planning, an accomplice on the outside and a week on the run. Three fugitives' brazen jailbreak from Orange County’s holding facility in 2016 captivated a nation with similar fervor as the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase.

The detainees even recorded their escape on a contraband cell phone, producing a video that taunted police. They fought the law, but in the end, the law won.

Hossein Nayeri found himself behind bars after a violent kidnapping and robbery that ended in cutting off a man’s penis. On October 2, 2012, Nayeri and two of his friends broke into the home of a medical dispensary owner and demanded $1,000,000 in cash. When the man, referred to only as “Michael” in court documents, said he didn’t have that much money, he and his roommate, Mary Barnes, were taken to the desert, where they thought he’d hidden $1,000,000. For the entire stretch of the two-and-a-half-hour drive, Michael was punched, tasered and burned with a blowtorch. 

One of the men said, “My patrón says if I can’t bring him the million dollars, then he wants me to bring him your dick," Rolling Stone reported. "While two men held Michael, another pulled down his shorts and proceeded to saw at his member while chanting 'back and forth, back and forth.'"

Michael and Barnes were left in the desert. Barnes was able to free herself and flag a sheriff’s deputy. She led the deputy to Michael, who was in excruciating pain but alive.

Upon learning that one of his friends was arrested for their failed caper, Nayeri fled to Iran, where he couldn’t be extradited back to the U.S. His ex-wife, Cortney Shegerian, eventually cooperated with authorities and set up a ruse for Nayeri to meet her in Spain. He believed he was switching flights in Prague, which is where the FBI arrested him in 2013. 

Nayeri was sent to the Orange County Central Men’s Jail while awaiting his trial. There he met Bac Duong and Jonathan Tieu, two inmates who collaborated with him on an escape plan. Duong was awaiting trial for attempted murder. Tieu was awaiting retrial on a murder case. 

Over the course of more than seven months, Nayeri and Duong plotted their escape. Tieu joined them a few months into the scheme. With the help of outside enablers, they secured tools to cut through a metal grate and 1-inch bars. Duong received a visit from his friend, Loc Ba Nguyen, two weeks before the escape. Duong pressed a note against the plexiglass separating them. It was a list of requested items that included a “cell phone, utility knife, rope, clothes, shoes” and a map of the area.

On January 22, 2016, the trio waited until the 5 a.m. head count, then crawled through the metal grate that led to plumbing between the walls and climbed up to the roof. They rappelled down four stories with bed linen. Duong got stuck about 20 feet down, and Nayeri had to guide him to safety, Nayeri testified. Throughout the escape, they recorded themselves on a smuggled iPhone. Nayeri served as narrator, boasting of the equipment used. One inmate gave a thumbs up. A photo was taken on the roof. A judge would later comment that “Shawshank Redemption had nothing on you guys,” referencing the Oscar-nominated prison film.

Nguyen picked them up and drove to a home in nearby Westminster, where they ditched their orange jumpsuits. After making several stops and unsuccessfully trying to buy a car, they decided to call a cab. Long Ma arrived in his Honda Civic. The 71-year-old drove the escapees around town, unaware of their fugitive status. At one point, they commandeered the car at gunpoint and the cab driver became a hostage. 

During the evening head count, jail workers realized Nayeri, Duong and Tieu were missing. The inmates had a 16 hour head start. 

The following day, Duong stole a white GMC Savana van. Nayeri and company used Ma to check into motels and pick up money wired by Nayeri’s grandmother. They stayed at the Flamingo Inn Motel in Rosemead for three nights. When Southern California became too risky, they headed north. 

The group checked into the Alameda Motel in San Jose on January 26. While in the Bay Area, they snapped pictures of themselves at the beach and posed with Ma. 

At one point, Duong and Nayeri allegedly got into a heated argument over whether to kill Ma. Duong was done running. While Nayeri and Tieu went to get the van’s windows tinted, Duong and Ma agreed to leave together and headed back to Orange County. On January 29, Duong turned himself in. 

The next day, a well-informed unhoused man who read about the fugitives spotted the stolen van outside a McDonald’s near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and alerted the police. Tieu was found inside the van. As two officers approached Nayeri, he bolted into Golden State Park but was quickly apprehended. 

Nayeri was sentenced to 32 months behind bars in 2023 for his part in the escape. However, he had already been sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping scheme in 2020. Duong collectively got 20 years for his previous crime, along with the jailbreak. Tieu reached a plea deal resulting in a sentence of eight years in 2023 with credit for time served.

The Orange County jail, which opened in 1968, came under heavy scrutiny following a Crout & Sida audit from 2008 that made a host of recommendations, few of which had been implemented. The report urged that “increasing staffing be acted upon swiftly.” Instead of hiring the approximately 450 more deputies, less experienced civilian personnel were brought in. They are not allowed to interact with inmates, according to a lawsuit filed by Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs in February 2016..

Besides being understaffed, the facility’s design is now outdated. The linear layout of the jail “makes it incredibly difficult to supervise inmate activity,” the suit claims. 

Most beneficial to Nayeri was the lax security he was under. Lower-level offenders are classified as white-banders. As more felons entered the building, the classification was “flexed” to expand the number of inmates labeled white-banders, per the AOCDS complaint. White-banders have more rights and freedoms than their more dangerous counterparts. 

Nayeri was a white-bander. So were Duong and Tieu. All three were among 68 inmates sleeping in Mod F, tank 28, a dorm-style housing area, according to the AODCS complaint. Corrections consultant Lenard Vare tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Somebody that’s charged with kidnapping and murder, I would never consider them to be low risk. That is a problem.”

Had the Central Men’s Jail (CMJ) deputies followed protocol, the escape likely would not have succeeded. Although they are required to conduct a physical body count, “It was discovered that this was not a common practice in the CMJ and has not been done this way for many years,” stated the AOCDS complaint. “Cpt. [Chris] Wilson's directive to ignore official Department policy may have played a role in the horrific consequences on Friday, January 22, 2016.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment from A&E Crime + Investigation. 

Vare can relate to the jailers’ dilemma. “I was a warden at a facility where we had an escape. It took us three months to catch the guy,” he says. “He went on a big crime spree and took people hostage. It’s a nightmare when that happens, when your security systems fail.”

Part of the blame for the O.C. jail’s deficiencies can be placed on legislative changes. “The issue that you have in California is realignment and the reclassification of a lot of crimes,” Vare says. “All of a sudden, the jails were dealing with high-risk individuals with felony charges in jail facilities that were not designed to hold that capacity of individuals long term.”

Vare offers a solution: “For larger jails, it would require a serious look at classification to make sure that they take all the high security people, put them all in one location and cater to that population based on their high security needs instead of putting them in available beds. Because if you put people just in available beds, you’re going to make mistakes.”