It was a warm Friday afternoon in southern Brisbane when Hussein I'lachi went to the Carina Police Station on February 17 to pay a parking ticket.
The fine had been a drawn-out experience, stemming from when he lent his car to a friend two years before. He was keen to finally put it behind him.
After waiting at the counter of the small suburban station for about 10 minutes, police officers filed from a back office.
"Six of them surrounded me, and then falsely accused me of being another person, [of] cheating, or hacking," Mr I'lachi said.
Unbeknown to him, the 21-year-old university student had been thrust into the middle of a decade-old hacking scandal at one of Queensland's most prestigious medical schools.
In October 2013, Shanker Karunanithi, a lecturer at Griffith University School of Medical Science, a 15-minute drive from Carina, noticed an apparent unauthorised altering of assessment results for a student in his class.
The ensuing investigation would reveal the existence of an extensive four-page list of passwords to the university's corporate and student systems, including Dr Karunanithi's.
Further, it had been accessed by 16 people within the school.
Police alleged that a pharmacological science student named Adam Alachi was behind the list and that his internet history proved he had downloaded keystroke capturing software known as a keylogger onto a school computer.
On October 10, 2013, a week and a half after Dr Karunanithi had reported the result changes, police raided a northern Gold Coast home in Upper Coomera. Multiple computers, hard drives and a phone were seized.
Police said they found admissions of "hacking" the school on the phone belonging to Mr Alachi.
Mr Alachi was not home at the time of the search.
After multiple attempts to locate him and visits to "every known address of the defendant", police released an official warrant for his arrest on December 30, 2013.
No arrests were made for almost 10 years.
'Looks like you might get deported'
It was Adam Alachi's name that appeared on the Brisbane Magistrates Court court list when Hussein I'lachi attended court on Wednesday morning to clear his name, as it has been at his three other appearances, on his bail forms, and every piece of documentation related to the case in the almost three months since his arrest.
Mr I'lachi said when he was charged, his phone number, address, fingerprints and photo were added to the file of Adam Alachi, and bail forms provided to him at the watch house and later at the prosecutor's office had his name written in pen as an alias next to the name of the defendant.
Mr I'lachi believes he was racially profiled, and does not understand how police could confuse him with Adam Alachi.
"The basis was just on my driver's licence, essentially, they said that my photo looked almost identical to his," Mr I'lachi said.
"That person that they alleged me to be was 30 years old, and I'm obviously 21."
After his arrest in February Mr I'lachi said police "thought they'd caught the biggest fish in the sea", and made multiple inappropriate comments.
When the Carina station shut at 4pm that day Mr I'lachi was transferred to the Brisbane Watch House in the CBD.
Over the next eight hours Mr I'lachi said he was not allowed to call his family, was pressured by police to confess to being Adam Alachi and threatened with deportation.
"They were trying to make me hold a placard with his name on it, like wanting me, forcefully, to say that I was him," he said.
"[One officer] said that the man had citizenship in Australia, but I don't. And then he was like: 'Oh, well, then it looks like you might get deported, and we might keep you here indefinitely until we can figure out who you really are'.
"I know I do have citizenship. I'm getting Centrelink, I have a Medicare card [and a] health card."
The similarity in the two men's surnames has been a point of confusion throughout the case. At one point a lawyer defending Mr I'lachi said "it was one of those ones where everyone's got it spelt differently".
But there appears to be multiple ways to spell Adam Alachi's name too.
The ABC has seen real estate records that show Adam Elache and his sister still own the Upper Coomera address searched by police in 2013.
Neighbours said they remember when police came to seize the computers.
Letters addressed to Adam and Sarah Elache were delivered to the house as recently as 2019.
The ABC's attempted to contact the owner of the home but no-one came to the door. Neighbours said the house has been rented.
Charges dropped
The charges against Adam Alachi were dropped in the magistrates court by police prosecutors on Wednesday, but Mr I'lachi feels he has still been wronged.
Rather than admitting to arresting the wrong person, the police said the charges were dropped due to a "catastrophic hard disk drive failure" leading to all of the evidence for the case being lost.
In response to several questions about Mr I'lachi's claims, the Queensland Police Service said the matter is under investigation and it would be "inappropriate to comment further".
Griffith University said it was not made aware of Mr I'lachi's arrest in February and would not answer specific questions about the repercussions of the hack in 2013.
In a statement they said, the university has invested substantially in cybersecurity over the past decade.
'I felt like I was in a different world'
After being released from the watch house around midnight in February, Mr I'lachi walked through the city and across the Brisbane River, the colourful glowing lights of the cities many bridges reflecting up at him as partygoers on scooters whipped around him. Friday night was in full swing.
"I felt like I was in a different world while everyone else was just living their life normally … it was just horrible," he said.
The police had returned his wallet with his supposedly faked IDs, but he had given his mother his phone back at Carina. He caught the last train home and walked 3 kilometres from the station.
The ordeal left Mr I'lachi anxious. He had to attend the Carina Police Station twice a week for nearly a month due to bail obligations.
He cut back on hours at his retail job and lost focus on his studies.
"It's been such a hindrance in my life. I can't even go to Carindale Westfield without feeling like I'm going to be prosecuted again, or when there's a police car behind me, my body wants to go into panic mode," he said.
"I do intend to take civil action after what has transpired.
"Every step of the way they have failed to do their job correctly."
