A high school athletics director was arrested on Thursday in Baltimore, Maryland after using artificial intelligence to create a fake recording of his school principal making racist and antisemitic remarks, which sparked death threats and administrative action against the victim. Dazhon Darien, 32, now faces multiple criminal charges for his twisted revenge plot against Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert—but local prosecutors warn that the law may not have fully caught up with the sinister potential of AI technology.
The video in question first circulated on social media in January, containing audio of a voice purportedly belonging to Eiswert insulting Black students, calling them “dumba**es,” and saying they “can’t test their way out of a paper bag.” The voice also threatens to fire two Black teachers and makes remarks about “joining the other side” if Jewish people keep complaining.
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After the recording was distributed amongst Pikeville High School staff, Eiswert was placed on administrative leave and the school was quickly inundated with hate-filled messages and angry phone calls from the community. Police were eventually stationed outside Eiswert’s home after he received a number of death threats, and other school employees felt unsafe as well.
Through it all, the principal maintained that he had never made the offending remarks, and he soon began to suspect that he had been the victim of a deepfake hoax. Billy Burke, the school administrators’ union rep, was likewise skeptical of the recording’s authenticity.
“The audio seems to be a dialogue, yet no other voices can be heard and there is no ambient noise,” he told CNN. “Schools and offices are busy, loud places, but none of that is evident in the audio. This was suspicious to me. The content of the audio seemed scripted in that the statements if released would defame the speaker, somehow protect those mentioned, and insult the community.”
Eiswert suggested that Darien, who had been hired as the school’s athletic director in July 2023, was behind the faked audio given that he was “technologically savvy” and “familiar with AI.”
According to an ensuing three-month investigation by the Baltimore County Police Department, the situation began in December, when Eiswert began to suspect that Darien had stolen school funds. After firing a longtime coach without administrative permission, Dairen then paid roughly $2,000 to his roommate, who worked as a basketball coach at the school, for also filling an assistant coaching position on the girls’ soccer team. But as Eiswert and his fellow school officials discovered, the roommate had never actually assisted during the season.
After multiple meetings to discuss this and other “frequent work performance challenges,” Darien was informed that his employment contract with the school would not be renewed for another year.
It was at this point police believe that he created a Gmail account under the pseudonym TJ Foust to distribute the fake audio clip. He had previously used the school district’s internet to search for AI tools like OpenAI and Bing Chat. One teacher who also did not get along with the principal confessed to sharing the recording with a female student, knowing that she would “rapidly spread the message around various social media outlets.” This same teacher also contacted local news stations and the NAACP.
Police subpoenaed the email’s IP address from Google, then tracked the account’s recovery number back to Darien. At the same time, forensic experts, including one from the FBI, verified that the recording was indeed fake, vindicating Eiswert to the school board.
“Based on an extensive investigation, detectives now have conclusive evidence the recording was not authentic,” the Baltimore County Police said in a press release. “As part of their investigation, detectives requested a forensic analyst contracted with the FBI to analyze the recording. The results from that analysis indicated the recording contained traces of AI-generated content.”
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A warrant was issued for Darien’s arrest on Wednesday, and he was apprehended on Thursday at the Baltimore International Airport attempting to board a flight to Texas. Authorities were alerted to the warrants when TSA found an improperly stored firearm in his luggage and conducted a routine background check. Investigators are unsure if he was attempting to flee from authorities at the time.
Darien was charged with theft, stalking, disruption of school operations, and retaliation against a witness, and was released on a $5,000 unsecured bond as of Friday morning. Baltimore County Schools put forward a recommendation to end his employment, and Principal Eiswert is expected to be reinstated with a clear record.
Scott Shellenberger, the Baltimore County state’s attorney, said that this is the first AI-related case his office has dealt with, possibly the first of its kind nationwide. As such, none of the charges against Darien mention his misuse of AI, and several of them only carry penalties of a few months in jail—a problem Shellenberger hopes the law can soon rectify.
“We need to take a broader look at how this technology can be used and abused to harm other people,” the prosecutor said.
The full joint press conference from the Baltimore County Police Department and the school board can be found below.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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