An Australian court has sent to jail a predator who posed as a YouTube influencer and blackmailed girls across the world into performing sex acts on camera. A majority of his victims were under 16 years of age, media reports said. The Pakistan-born man, 29-year-old Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, was handed a jail term of 17 years by the Perth court after he pleaded guilty to a total of 119 charges. His victims included 286 people from a total of 20 countries, which included the US, the UK, France, and Japan, besides Australia, according to the reports.
Rasheed pretended to be a 15-year-old "YouTube star" with a large following to manipulate his victims into a spiral of escalating abuse by threatening to expose their explicit messages and images to their friends and family, the District Court of WA was told, according to a BBC report.
There was "no comparable case … I can find in Australia", Judge Amanda Burrows said in reference to the magnitude of the volume of offences, as per an ABC News report.
The Australian authorities have called it "one of the worst sextortion cases" in history.
"The callous disregard this man had for his victims around the world and their distress, humiliation and fear make it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia," BBC quoted Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean as saying.
It won't be before 2033 that Rasheed, who is already serving a five-year term for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old, will be eligible to apply for a parole.
Rasheed's Modus Operandi
According to the media reports cited above, Rasheed pretended to be a 15-year-old internet star in America to strike up a conversation with his targets. He would send them pictures of the YouTube star, and ask innocuous questions in the beginning. One he had gained their trust, Rasheed would begin to discuss sexual fantasies with them.
The court was told how he would threaten these girls to perform different sex acts, failing which he would send their responses to their acquaintances. The "degrading" acts would be live-streamed and at times include other children at home or even pets, BBC reported.
On several occasions, the court heard, Rasheed had invited other adults and paedophiles — as many as 98 at one time — to watch the livestream.
The court was also told that Rasheed would set a "countdown" timer as he threatened his targets to comply with his demands, according to ABC. Some of the victims told the authorities that they were suicidal after the online experience, with BBC reporting that one of them even sent him images of self-harm. He would still bully the girls, despite "obvious distress" and "extreme fear".
Who Is Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, And How He Was Caught
Rasheed was very young when he had moved to Australia from Pakistan, according to a psychiatrist's report submitted to the court. The report described his parents as "traditional, conservative and strict". He went to an all-boys school that did not have any other Muslim students apart from his brothers. This led to him "feeling socially isolated", the report said, as per the ABC report cited above.
It was in 2018 that Rasheed first got access to child exploitation material, but that "lost its effect" soon and he started to directly target children in 2019.
Rasheed, according to ABC, was first charged in 2021 after the Interpol and United States police contacted the Australian Federal Police raising concerns about a person believed to be from Australia and targeting young girls on social media. He was picked up after a police raid on his home in Perth.
Rasheed was charged separately for sexually abusing a 14-year-old child in his car twice at a local park, and was already serving a five-year-term when the 17-year term was handed out to him. The judge specified that the case was from the same time during which he was committing the offences with his global targets, ABC reported.
What The Court Said
While in prison, Rasheed has been part of a sex offenders treatment program. However, the court was told, he still carried a "well above average risk" of repeating the offence, as per his assessment by a psychiatrist.
He is said to have "hebephilia" and "coercive sexual sadism disorder", which are a condition described as having a "persistent sexual interest in pubescent children in early adolescence", according to the ABC report.
Before being jailed, the court heard, Rasheed had been engaging with "incel" online communities that promote the misogynistic view that women are inferior to men and owe sex to the latter.
"You began to see women and girls as objects of gratification rather than people..." the psychiatrist's report mentioned above was quoted as saying.
As the court sentenced Rasheed for 665 offences committed over a period spanning 11 months, Judge Burrows said: "The victims will forever live with the fear that the recordings you made of them will be [further] disseminated."