ORLANDO — A 30-year-old Orlando man who used foreign email services and a virtual private network to send death and sexual assault threats to a former fellow graduate student in Utah has been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Julie S. Sneed imposed the sentence on Abdalla Hatim Elhakiem after he pleaded guilty on Feb. 13 to stalking and interstate transmission of a threat to injure, United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe announced.
Elhakiem had been enrolled in the Biochemistry Ph.D. program at the University of Utah before he slashed the tire of a car owned by the victim, a fellow student. The university suspended him, and he returned to Orlando. In November 2024, in violation of a Utah protective order, Elhakiem began sending threatening and harassing emails to the victim from accounts created using foreign email services based in Switzerland and Germany. He sent threats that he would sexually assault and kill her, using a VPN and other methods to conceal his identity as the source.
On Aug. 6, 2025, Elhakiem sent a threat to kill the victim using a Gmail account that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were able to tie directly to him, according to court documents. That link proved critical to the federal case.
The FBI investigated the case with assistance from the Salt Lake City Police Department and the University of Utah Police Department. Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Flanigan prosecuted the case in the Middle District of Florida.
Elhakiem now faces 27 months in federal custody — a sentence that reflects the severity of interstate stalking charges, which carry a maximum penalty of five years under federal law. Federal sentencing guidelines account for factors including the violation of a protective order and the sustained nature of the harassment campaign, which spanned months across state lines.