MIAMI – A Miami Beach lawyer was arrested Tuesday for cyberstalking his ex-girlfriend for months after they broke up and affixing a GPS tracker to her car to pinpoint her every move, police said.
Grant Sarbinoff, 37, was charged with one count each of stalking, identity theft, identity theft with 20 or more victims, unlawful installation of a GPS tracking device, harassing phone calls and unlawful use of a communication device. He was also charged with 16 counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer system.
According to an arrest warrant, Sarbinoff cyberstalked his ex-girlfriend in some form nearly every day since their relationship ended in September.
The arrest warrant details how Sarbinoff allegedly used a variety of online services, including her Florida Power & Light account, to impersonate his ex-girlfriend, shutting off her electricity and making multiple charges to her credit card.
Among the other allegations made in the warrant are that Sarbinoff used ride-sharing apps such as Uber to be dropped off near his ex-girlfriend's home late at night more than 20 times after they broke up, made hundreds of telephone calls to her using a phone device to make it appear as if the calls were coming from someone else, left dozens of messages on her phone, made numerous harassing calls to her new boyfriend and affixed a GPS tracking device to her car.
"Stalking and cyberstalking are 21st-century forms of domestic abuse aimed at terrorizing a victim and rendering the person helpless," Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. "Fortunately, good police and prosecutor cooperation swept away all of the deception intended to keep this harassment secret and working."
Sarbinoff was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2010.