A man who posed as a ride-hailing driver outside San Francisco nightclubs and preyed on women who mistook him for their driver was convicted of multiple rapes, the district attorney announced Friday.
Following a 12-week trial, Orlando Vilchez Lazo, 44, was convicted last week of two counts of kidnapping with intent to commit rape, three counts of kidnapping, four counts of rape by force or fear, and two counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object.
Prosecutors said Vilchez Lazo targeted women mostly in the city’s South of Market neighborhood who were leaving bars or nightclubs by themselves. He would arrive in a vehicle with Lyft or Uber stickers and pick up women who thought they were getting into a rideshare they had ordered. Instead, he would take them to other locations and rape them, sometimes at knifepoint.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said DNA evidence allowed investigators to link the series of rapes that first began in 2013. In 2018, additional rapes were determined to have used the same modus operandi. After a task force was formed that year to investigate the rapes, Vilchez Lazo was arrested in July 2018 at his home in San Mateo County…