Police in Mountain View, California, were conducting an investigation into Sunmee Kim when they found she was wanted for a parole violation nearly 400 miles to the south.
The parole violation from Orange County was related to a 2013 conviction for almost the exact same crime the Mountain View cops were looking into, according to a news release from the department on Facebook.
Kim, 44, met several men from a Korean dating site, moved in with them, then falsely accused them of domestic assault or of trying to rob her, police say, according to OC Weekly. When they were in jail, she would clean out their homes, taking everything of value.
She was sentenced to four years in state prison after pleading guilty to eight counts of false imprisonment, four counts of first-degree burglary, two counts of grand theft and one count of identity theft.
One of the businessmen she was accused of conning, Deukman Lee of Irvine, sued the city for $150,000 after he was arrested on suspicion of domestic assault, according to The Orange County Register. He was released the next day when Irvine police recognized inconsistencies in Kim's story.
That was then. This is now.
As a term of her parole in 2017, Kim was not allowed to leave Orange County, according to KCBS. But Mountain Home police say that in January of this year, she was living in Palo Alto with a man she said was her fiancé.
He isn't.
Using another name, as she did to earn her prior identity theft conviction in 2013, she called the cops on a man who told police the two were only housemates, not romantically linked, according to the Facebook release. Kim said her fiancé attacked her, but she did not provide police with a full name or identification, again, just like the Irvine case for which she was on parole.
The man was arrested at the time of the report but was later released for a lack of evidence. In the meantime, the release says, Kim cleaned out her roommate's Palo Alto home and left, but didn't go far. She was arrested Thursday in the same town.
She has used fake names including Sunny Jean Kim, Jean Kim, Jiin and Ashley Kim, to dupe police and the men she meets on KoreanCupid.com, according to Mountain View police. They believe Kim might have victimized more men, perhaps across the entire state.
Mountain View police are working with Santa Clara County prosecutors to determine what criminal charges to file against her, in addition to the parole violation she faces, according to the Mountain View Voice.
The newspaper also reported that the 2011 frauds that ended in her 2013 conviction were not her first foray into the life of a conwoman. In 2009, she reportedly faked her own kidnapping in Los Angeles in an attempt to shake down the man with whom she was living for the fake ransom money.