Lang
1/31/24
An employee at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is accused of using her access to medical records to help cyberstalk a woman who was seeing her boyfriend.
That’s according to UI Police, who took 29-year-old Sara Safsaf of Melrose Avenue into custody just before 9:00 Tuesday night. The UI web site shows Safsaf is a clinic services specialist in the UIHC’s John Pappajohn Pavilion. Investigators say Safsaf would wait outside her boyfriend’s house to see which women were visiting, then follow them in her car after they left. Safsaf allegedly used her UIHC position to access one such woman’s medical records without permission on multiple occasions between December of 2022 and last Friday. She also reportedly set up multiple fake social media accounts to annoy and alarm the woman, including one which used the woman’s license plate number as the username.
Safsaf allegedly admitted to police that she created the fake accounts, and that she had used social media to identify women who were seeing her boyfriend. She reportedly identified one woman by seeing her phone number on her boyfriend’s phone, and she matched with the woman on Tinder.
Safsaf is charged with eight counts of Unauthorized Computer Access, two counts of Stalking Using a Technological Device – 3rd or Subsequent Offense and one count of 3rd Degree Harassment. If convicted on all counts, she faces a maximum of over 36 years in prison.