Inset: Anjela Borisova Urumova (Bucks County DA); Background: The Redner’s supermarket parking lot where she falsely claimed a man tried to rape and kidnap her last year (WPVI).
A Pennsylvania man spent a month in jail for allegedly attempting to rape and kidnap a 20-year-old woman in a supermarket parking lot last year — until it was revealed that the supposed victim had completely fabricated the entire ordeal. Now the man’s accuser, 20-year-old Anjela Borisova Urumova, will be doing her own stint behind bars for the lies that could have derailed an innocent man’s life, authorities announced
According to a news release from the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, Common Pleas Judge Stephen A. Corr on Tuesday ordered Urumova to serve 45 days to 23 months in a state correctional facility as well as one year of probation. She will also be required to undergo a mental heath evaluation and pay $3,600 in restitution to the victim, whom she is prohibited from contacting.
“Not only did this targeted false report impact the victim and his family in unimaginable ways, but there is also a profound ripple effect,” District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said in a statement following the sentencing hearing. “A crime like this can shatter the community’s confidence in the system. It can jeopardize prosecutions of legitimate crimes of sexual violence. The prosecution and sentence of this defendant for a malicious false report demonstrates that this will not be tolerated.”
Prosecutors said that the victim, Daniel Pierson, attended Tuesday’s proceedings along with his wife and mother, but they did not read a victim impact statement because the case was “still too emotional for them.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, Urumova in January formally pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges in connection with the fictitious story, including one count each of false alarm to an agency of public safety and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, two counts of false reports, and three counts of unsworn falsification to authorities.
Urumova on April 16, 2024, accused Pierson of attacking her outside of a Redner’s supermarket in Middleton Township, claiming the 41-year-old man pulled her pants down and struck her in the face. At the time she claimed to have been attacked, Urumova had a visible laceration on her lip.
“As part of the investigation, Middletown Township Police collected and reviewed available surveillance videos from multiple retailers in the area of the reported attack, and a detective with the DA’s office conducted a forensic review of Urumova’s cellphone data,” prosecutors previously said. “The review led to the discovery of multiple inconsistencies and contradictory information with Urumova’s account of the attack at the Redner’s parking lot.”
When authorities confronted Urumova regarding the conflicting facts in her narrative, she “admitted she lied about the entire incident” and confirmed that she had not been attacked by anyone, prosecutors said.
While admitting that she made up the assault out of whole cloth, Urumova also divulged that she “specifically targeted” and identified Pierson as her attacker because she had “seen him and the truck in the past” and was able to describe him and the vehicle to police. She described the vehicle as a dark blue Ford F-150 pickup truck with a “thin blue line” sticker on the back windshield with visible dents and rust on the exterior.
Urumova further stated that her injuries were actually the result of an incident with her grandmother, but she falsely blamed Pierson because she’d seen him before and believed him to be “creepy,” according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime.
“Her grandmother, who Urumova claimed suffered from dementia, did not recognize her as she entered the house and threw a plastic object at her, striking her in the lip,” the complaint states. “This incident allegedly caused the laceration to her lip that she later blamed on Pierson.”
As a result of Urumova’s false accusations, Pierson was charged with multiple felonies and spent exactly 31 days behind bars before authorities were able to determine that he had not done anything illegal. The charges against him were subsequently dropped and he was set free.
“In this case, she [Urumova] targeted an innocent man and accused him of one of the worst crimes a person can be accused of,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin M. McElroy said. “I’m incredibly grateful for the work that law enforcement did in this case to get down to what happened, but it can’t change the fact that a man spent 31 days sleeping in a cell for a crime he didn’t commit.”
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