Abdul Elahi, a sexual offender who blackmailed his victims into abusing themselves, their siblings and children and sold their footage to other paedophiles, has been jailed for 32 years. The National Crime Agency (NCA) described the 26-year-old’s crimes as “some of the most sickening sexual offending” it has ever investigated.
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Elahi targeted almost 2,000 victims and has admitted 158 charges committed against 72 complainants. He will be subject to an eight-year extension to his normal licence period.
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The Birmingham resident was described as being “in a league of his own” in terms of the scale of his online offending by the Crown Court. His victims ranged in age from eight-month-old babies to adults, it said.
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Elahi posed as a stockbroker or rich businessman on websites to lure his victims, who were in debt or too young to legitimately be on the sites. He would trick them into sharing naked pictures od themselves in exchange for money. However, he then threatened to expose the images to the victims’ family and friends unless they sent more pictures. Elahi made more than £25,000 from selling the pictures.
Judge Sarah Buckingham said that Elahi is the “very worst type of predatory offender ever identified thus far”. The court heard more than 67,000 indecent images of children had been recovered from hard drives.
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The images were compiled in ‘box-sets’ and distributed in vast quantities.
“There is no conceivable way of tracing and destroying all the material you have spread online, causing ongoing distress to your victims. The abhorrent nature of your crimes warrants an extremely long sentence for the protection of the public.” the judge said, as per BBC.
“At first, it was very minimal on what he’s asking. He just asked for some basic pictures. And then he went on to videos, and then he requested for more degrading, quite hurtful videos, pictures,” a victim said, as per Sky News.