Man sentenced for stalking, sexual exploitation of Whitehall woman

A Nepalese man living in Ohio pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh on Monday and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for interstate stalking of a Whitehall woman with whom he had a sexual relationship starting when she was 15.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines imposed that term on Dev Rimal, 24, of Cuyahoga Falls, who pleaded to stalking and harassment following.

Rimal, who had indicated before his arrest that he intended to return to Nepal for an arranged marriage, was indicted in Pittsburgh in 2020 following an investigation by Whitehall police and the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.

He repeatedly stalked the young woman after she had left Ohio and moved to Whitehall, trying to kidnap her and threatening to kill her, her boyfriend and her family.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not identity the victims of sex crimes.

Rimal and the victim had both lived in Ohio and had a sexual relationship when he was 20 and she was 15. He took sexual videos of her during their encounters and shared them with a neighbor of hers.

In 2017, the victim moved to Whitehall. The relationship continued, but he became increasingly jealous and threatening. She stopped communicating with him, but he kept trying to contact her through Facebook and other social media, according to the FBI.

In May 2018, he drove to the victim’s house and forced her into his car; she jumped from the vehicle while it was moving and ended up in the hospital for her injuries.

Whitehall police obtained a search warrant for Rimal’s Facebook Messenger account and reviewed chats from the day before the attempted kidnapping in which he told a friend the victim was cheating on him and asked for the man’s help to “get that [expletive] in

my car.”

Whitehall officers charged Rimal with attempted kidnapping but dropped the case when the victim recanted.

The sexual relationship resumed in 2018 and 2019, the FBI said, but Rimal again began to issue threats against the victim, her family and her new boyfriend. He also made statements about leaving for Nepal.

In April 2019, for example, he said, “trust me, I will kill” the boyfriend and also threatened to pour acid on the victim’s face. He said he would kill someone in her family before leaving the U.S. or force the victim to kill herself before “I go to Nepal forever.”

At one point, he also sent an image to one of the victim’s family members with a picture of himself holding a sharp object to his throat.

The image showed the victim’s name carved into his chest, which was bleeding, according to the FBI. Police also recovered sexual videos that Rimal made with the victim.

In February 2020, police determined that Rimal was in the Pittsburgh area and stalking the victim at her job and at the college she attended. That was a violation of a protection from abuse order she had taken out against him.

Police and the FBI took him into custody at a house a few miles from where the victim was living.

A federal grand jury indicted him in May 2020.

In addition to the 30 months in prison, the judge ordered Rimal to be on probation for three years after he gets out, the first six months on electronic monitoring.