LOWER BUCKS COUNTY, PA — A Montgomery County man faces up to 23 months in prison for a “relentless campaign” of stalking a Bucks County woman he met on a dating site, authorities said.
Matthew John Bustin, 34, of King of Prussia, was sentenced Thursday to nine to 23 months in county jail and seven years of probation by Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr.
During the sentencing hearing on Thursday, authorities outlined Bustin’s actions, which included online searches of the victim before he ever contacted her on a dating site. His actions later led the Bensalem Township woman to move from her home.
Weeks after the woman started chatting with Bustin, he was charged in a similar stalking case in Lehigh County, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office. The victim had only talked to Bustin for six weeks, authorities said.
The victim read an impact statement, saying she returned home from vacation on April 16, 2024, to a dark apartment with the electricity cut, internet disconnected, and her security camera turned to the wall.
“I truly believed there was someone in my apartment with me,” she stated. She said she waited in her kitchen with a knife and called a friend for help. She described the “scariest part” as “knowing someone had been in my apartment… yet still not knowing who would do this.”
She filed a police report the next day, and within two days of filing the police report, she was in so much fear that she moved out. The victim continued to sleep with a knife next to her bed. In what she described as “a heart-stopping moment,” she found a note tucked among the pillows.
The discovery, which she described as a “sick psychological game,” confirmed her fears that Bustin was her stalker.
The investigation, by the Bensalem Township Police Department, uncovered that Bustin had placed a magnetized GPS tracking device on the underside of her car. Surveillance video captured him lying on the ground to plant the device while her car was parked at her workplace, authorities said.
Bustin’s phone data placed him at her home and workplace on at least nine separate occasions after the relationship ended, and at her home at the exact moment her power was cut.
In her statement, the victim reflected on Bustin’s history, noting that he was charged in the Lehigh County stalking case around the time he called her for the first time.
As a condition of his sentence, Bustin will not be eligible for parole until he completes the H.O.P.E. substance abuse recovery program.
He has also been ordered to have no contact with the victim or any social media sites, pay $1,334.60 in restitution, and comply with all mental health and drug, and alcohol requirements.