Hayward man can’t help crank calling police departments, even after arrest

OAKLAND >> A man who allegedly made threatening and graphic phone calls to police departments from sea to shining sea was ordered detained and hit with new charges, records show.

Last week, U.S. Attorneys filed a new criminal complaint against Sammy Sultan of Hayward, alleging he continued to make “obscene or threatening phone calls” to police departments across the United States and Canada for months after he was initially arrested on similar charges. He also faces one charge of threatening interstate communications, and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Sultan was arrested and charged with making obscene calls in March, but posted $5,000 bond the day after his arrest. In September, U.S. Attorneys accused him of violating a bail condition that he cease prank calling the police, and successfully petitioned for Sultan to be placed in federal custody pending his trial.

Court documents describe Sultan as an extreme and twisted prank caller, who for years made hundreds of calls to departments in more than 20 states. The allegations include, among other things, that he called a Massachusetts state trooper, asked to “sniff her slipper,” and then threatened to kill her. Days later, he allegedly called three other Massachusetts police departments for a cumulative total of three hours, claiming to have escaped from a mental institution and to be in possession of an AK-47, and asking the dispatchers if they had ever seen a woman riding in the back of a garbage truck.

He is also accused of making sexually graphic comments to a Canadian Mountie, and placing dozens of versions of the same fake hostage call in which he allegedly claimed to have a woman tied up, then played a recorded audiotape of a woman screaming in the background. In several cases, local police departments believed the calls were real and prepared hostage negotiation teams.

“(Sultan’s) behavior distracted law enforcement agencies on a global scale, and represented a safety risk to the communities where law enforcement officers were distracted from real safety concerns to respond to the threats posed by defendant,” U.S. Attorneys wrote in a proposed order to detain Sultan, which a judge later signed.

A trial date has not yet been set.