ABDUL FROM BIRMINGHAM TARGETED NEARLY 2,000 VICTIMS IN ONLINE SEXUAL OFFENCES

In June 2021, a Birmingham man named Abdul, also known as Abdul-Hasib Elahi, was exposed for his involvement in a disturbing online predatory scheme that targeted almost 2,000 victims globally. Operating under the false guise of a stockbroker, Elahi engaged in blackmail and the exploitation of victims to produce and distribute illicit material. His heinous activities included coercing victims into performing sexual acts on themselves or others and then selling the footage as part of organized ‘box sets’.

His victims ranged from infants as young as eight months old. The 26-year-old offender, residing on Allcroft Road in Sparkhill, had admitted to 158 criminal offences. These included blackmail, sharing private images, distributing indecent images, causing a child to participate in sexual activity, fraud, possessing extreme pornography, and accumulating over 65,000 indecent images of children, some depicting babies being raped.

The offenses took place from January 1, 2017, to August 7, 2020. Until recently, restrictions were in place preventing the reporting of his guilty pleas, but these were lifted by a judge at Birmingham Crown Court.

Another defendant, Kirsty Nicholls, aged 35 from Middlesex, who was known to Elahi through a sugar daddy website, had previously pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual assault of a child and one count of making an indecent photograph.

Elahi and Nicholls are scheduled to be sentenced on September 9 and 10 at Birmingham Crown Court. Evidence presented during the investigation revealed that Elahi provided ‘master classes’ on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, instructing other offenders on how to blackmail victims and illicitly obtain indecent images of children without detection.

Elahi’s scheme involved posing as a wealthy stockbroker or businessman on various dating platforms. He specifically targeted individuals in debt or underage, tricking them into sending nude or partly clothed images. Some victims were reached via social media. To entice victims, he promised payment of thousands of pounds for images, often sending fake screenshots of bank transactions to persuade them.

The National Crime Agency’s investigation showed there were at least 196 victims within the UK, with active contact made with at least 600 people there. His reach extended internationally, with attempts to contact 1,367 women in the United States and victims in 20 other countries, including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Elahi swiftly moved communications from websites to WhatsApp to avoid detection. Once he obtained enough compromising images, he threatened to reveal them to victims’ families and friends unless more images were sent. The fear and intimidation led some victims to comply under duress.

All instances of abuse were systematically stored on cloud storage services. Elahi then sold this content as ‘box sets’ via cloud platforms and Telegram, earning over £25,000 and causing further trauma for victims, especially as their families learned of the abuse and more offenders attempted blackmail.

He was arrested on December 19, 2018, by officers from the National Crime Agency after allegations surfaced that he was blackmailing a 15-year-old girl in America. Authorities seized and examined his mobile phones and computers for forensic evidence, leading to his subsequent prosecution.