Serial rape suspect posing as SF ride-hailing driver arrested

Orlando Vilchez Lazo, 37, is being held on $4,234,000 bail. Orlando Vilchez Lazo, 37, is being held on $4,234,000 bail. Photo: San Francisco Police Department Photo: San Francisco Police Department Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Serial rape suspect posing as SF ride-hailing driver arrested 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

For five years, a predator known as the “Rideshare Rapist” trolled the streets of San Francisco, exploiting the proliferation of ride-hailing services in the city by posing as a driver for hire and luring women outside of bars and nightclubs into his vehicle before raping them, sometimes at knifepoint.

But police got a break in the troubling case Thursday and arrested 37-year-old San Mateo resident Orlando Vilchez Lazo after DNA evidence linked him to four rapes in San Francisco dating to 2013, officials announced Friday.

“These assaults were not date rapes. They were not acquaintance rapes. These assaults were violent rapes committed by a serial rapist — a sexual-deviant predator who was not going to stop until he was caught,” said Cmdr. Greg McEachern, who heads the Police Department’s investigations bureau.

Investigators believe Vilchez Lazo may have raped other women, and police are asking other victims and witnesses to come forward with any information about his alleged crimes.

Officials described how Vilchez Lazo took advantage of San Francisco’s ubiquitous ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber, giving him easy access to a wealth of inebriated victims in the late-night hours. At times, he allegedly placed placards from major companies inside his vehicle, pulling up outside nightclubs around Howard Street in the city’s South of Market neighborhood and deceiving victims who mistook his car for one they ordered.

“Here in the city, oftentimes ride-shares will hang around in the downtown area, including in South of Market,” McEachern said. “We’ve seen victims of assaults in the past where they believe they’re getting into a ride-share, but they’re really not.”

Once inside the vehicle, Vilchez Lazo would drive the women to other locations, violently rape them and then drop them off, sometimes near their homes in San Francisco, McEachern said.

Police said Vilchez Lazo was not working for any ride-hailing services when he committed his rapes, but investigators were looking into whether he was ever employed by a such a company.

“This is the exact thing that everyone fears could happen here in the city,” McEachern said.

Some 5,700 Uber and Lyft cars roam the streets at the weekday peak of 6:30 to 7 p.m., according to a report released last month by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. The busiest time, Fridays from 7:30 to 8 p.m., sees more than 6,500 ride-hailing cars.

Vilchez Lazo was booked in San Francisco County Jail on suspicion of four felony counts each of rape by force, rape by use of drugs, kidnapping, assault, assault with intent to commit rape, assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment, battery, battery with serious bodily injury, sexual penetration with a foreign object, and criminal threats.

Court records show that Vilchez Lazo has no previous criminal record in San Francisco. If convicted, he could face life behind bars.

Investigators believe Vilchez Lazo’s crime spree began in 2013, when police said he picked up a woman outside a San Francisco bar and raped her. Investigators got a DNA sample of the assailant from the woman’s rape kit, but the information did not register any matches on a national database of genetic profiles.

Then, around Valentine’s Day 2018, police said he struck again. The circumstances of the attack mirrored the rape from 2013 and investigators linked his DNA to the previous case.

In May, Vilchez Lazo allegedly committed another rape by posing as a driver for a ride-hailing company, prompting investigators to create a task force with police, the district attorney’s office and the FBI.

For weeks, the task force worked by writing search warrants, setting up undercover officers and conducting surveillance operations around the South of Market neighborhood. The team followed leads to San Jose and Stockton but came up empty.

In June, the rapist hit again. A fourth victim was raped and investigators found DNA matching the three previous cases. This attack, though, added a new element of violence: The rapist used a knife, McEachern said.

The break in the case came on July 7, when investigators in the South of Market neighborhood spotted a man whose modus operandi matched the description of the four previous assaults. Police pulled Vilchez Lazo over in a traffic stop, obtained his DNA and matched it to the other assaults.

San Francisco and San Mateo police executed an arrest warrant at Vilchez Lazo’s home on Thursday morning and placed him under arrest. He is being held on $4,234,000 bail.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky