An Uber driver who admitted to a sexual encounter with an intoxicated female rider was convicted on Monday, July 6 of sexual assault charges.
An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated for less than two hours before finding Amir Attia, 51, guilty of two felony counts of sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.
Whether the then-25-year-old woman was willing or even able to consent to any sexual contact with the much older Uber driver in the summer of 2018 was the key question for jurors.
The prosecution noted that Attia had picked the woman up from the Tustin police station, hours after she had been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.
“He saw an opportunity,” Deputy District Attorney Elise Levy told jurors during closing arguments Monday in a Santa Ana courtroom. “It was the middle of the night. She was alone in a car with him. No one else was around. And she was unable to protect herself.”
Attia’s attorney told jurors that the woman made sexual advances toward Attia and instigated the sexual contact. Attia ultimately told police that he digitally penetrated her twice.
“Does he make a mistake? Yeah, he said he did,” said Ed Welbourn, Attia’s attorney. “But not a criminal mistake. Ethically wrong. Morally wrong. But not criminal.”
The woman went out drinking with friends after work on the evening of July 22, 2018 and ended up hitting a center median and disabling her vehicle while driving home, according to testimony during the trial. She was released from the Tustin police station around 2 a.m. Surveillance footage from the station showed her seemingly falling and staggering and having difficulty walking straight.
The woman described recalling feeling the fabric of the car seats after spending time sitting on hard benches in the police station and making a comment about how warm it was in the car. The next thing she remembered was waking up hours later at her home, sore and feeling like something was wrong, the prosecution said.
Attia’s DNA was found in saliva on the woman’s left breast, the prosecutor said. During a police interview Attia eventually admitted to putting his fingers inside of the woman two separate times.
The prosecutor argued that the woman was too intoxicated during the ride to give consent to a sexual encounter. A blood test taken when she was at the police station determined that her blood-alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit to drive, the prosecutor noted.
“He saw she was passed out, knew she was blacked out and knew she wasn’t going to remember anything,” Levy said.
Attia had a previous misdemeanor sexual battery conviction in 1983, the prosecutor told jurors, when he admitted to touching an intimate part of another person against their will for the purpose of sexual arousal.
Welbourn countered that the woman was talking to Attia during the ride, leading to a “brief, consensual” sexual interaction. Afterward, the woman didn’t want to tell her boyfriend or parents what actually happened, the defense attorney alleged.
“A victim is treated differently than a cheater,” the defense attorney added.
Attia, who had been free on bond, was immediately taken into custody following the verdict.
The exact number of sexual assault reports tied to rideshare companies is unclear. But a New York Times investigation in 2025 based on court records found that Uber received a report of a sexual assault “almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022.” Uber has long argued that the vast majority of trips — an estimated 99.9 percent — are without incident.