Predator jailed for 32 years over ‘sickening sexual crimes’
MAN SOLD ‘BOX SETS’ OF DEGRADING MATERIAL FROM MORE THAN 2,000 VICTIMS
A MAN has been jailed for 32 years after subjecting more than 2,000 victims to blackmail and committing degrading sexual offences.
Abdul Elahi, 26, from Birmingham, posed as a stockbroker and manipulated his victims into abusing themselves, their siblings and children. He then sold the footage as ‘box sets’ to other paedophiles.
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) described Elahi’s crimes as “some of the most sickening sexual offending” that it has ever investigated.
Unemployed Elahi admitted to 158 charges committed against 72 complainants and is believed to have tried to exploit victims across 34 countries.
There were 72 victims on the indictment, with ages ranging from eight months to adults.
From his home in Sparkhill, Elahi posed as a stockbroker or wealthy businessman on socalled ‘sugar daddy’ websites. He chose victims who were in debt or too young to legitimately be on the sites.
He would trick them into sending him naked or partially clothed images of themselves, promising payments of thousands of pounds in return for the pictures. He would then threaten to send them to their family and friends unless they sent more pictures. He is said to have made more than £25,000 from the images.
One woman said he contacted her through Instagram in 2018, offering her large sums of money for lingerie photographs, reported Sky News.
Elahi told her he needed pictures of her IDs as a form of verification, and later threatened to send the images to her parents’ and work addresses if she did not meet his demands.
He “eventually asked for more and more naked photos and then more violent and graphic pictures – violence inflicted on myself, asking if I’ve got younger siblings, if I knew any close people that were younger than me... and then just got more and more graphic... just really degrading stuff”, she revealed.
The so-called ‘box sets’ of abusive images and videos compiled by Elahi were distributed in large quantities, the court heard, after girls and young adults were blackmailed into providing humiliating and degrading sexual material.
Around 550 females in Britain are believed to have been targeted, with almost 2,000 identified in the UK and the US.
Prosecutor Adrian Langdale QC said Elahi had switched online conversations to WhatsApp to cover his tracks.
Langdale added: “About 67,000 indecent images of children have been recovered from numerous devices and cloud storage for Elahi.”
Elahi was sentenced on December 10 at Birmingham crown court.
In victim impact statements, one woman, who was a schoolgirl at the time of the offences, said she tried to take an overdose of paracetamol after learning that Elahi had uploaded her images to Twitter.
It was 12 months after she had sent him images that she received messages on her phone showing her pictures online.
She said: “I still think about these incidents often which makes me sad.
“I would say for two years this person has ruined my life. I was heartbroken. I remember my 16th birthday, I spent the night crying, I was severely depressed.
“I had to basically pick up the pieces of my life and glue them back together.”
Another person said she considered taking her own life and is now on medication for anxiety and depression. She is constantly worried that videos of her will emerge online again.
“I wish that this had never happened to me,” she said.
“I hope I can put this behind me and get on with the rest of my life. I am trying to move on but I find it very hard. I feel that this will be with me for the rest of my life.”
Tony Cook, head of child sexual abuse operations at the NCA, said it was “one of the most serious and complex cases we have had”.
He added, “There are very many offenders like Elahi who mask their real identities with convincing personas to exploit both children and adults.
“It’s vital that parents speak to their children about who they communicate with online and what they share. These offences can happen to anyone.”
■ Anybody who believes they may have been a victim of Elahi or have information on his offending can contact the NCA at Op.Makedom@nca.gov.uk