“A Ride to Terror”: The Story of a Young Cleaner and a Predatory Scheme in Tehran
On a mild spring evening in mid-March 2024, a young woman stepped out of her modest home in the western districts of Tehran. Born in 1985, the woman, whose name we are withholding for privacy reasons, had spent the last several years working as a cleaner in private households to support herself. Like many others seeking temporary work, she turned to Divar, an online classifieds platform widely used across Iran for job advertisements, rentals, and second-hand goods.
What began as a routine job inquiry on that day turned into a harrowing experience of deception, fear, and abuse—a trauma that would not only shatter her sense of security but would also spark a full-scale investigation that uncovered a disturbing pattern of targeted crimes.
The First Encounter
According to her official complaint filed with the 16th Department of the Greater Tehran Police, the young woman received a phone call on March 17, 2024. The man on the line introduced himself as “Mr. Maleki,” claiming he needed someone to clean the stairs of an apartment complex near the Iran Khodro intersection. The offer seemed straightforward: a simple task, familiar territory, a fair wage. The address he provided matched a known residential area, and she had no reason to suspect otherwise.