An Australian man who pretended to be a famous teenage YouTuber has been sentenced to 17 years for orchestrating what police are calling "one of the worst sextortion cases in history."
Twenty-nine-year-old Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed blackmailed hundreds of victims across 20 countries, ultimately pleading guilty to 119 charges involving 286 people. Most victims were children, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said in a press release confirming that Rasheed targeted at least 180 kids under 16.
AFP coordinated with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and INTERPOL to catch Rasheed before more victims could be harmed. Their investigation started in 2019 when cops in Leon County, Florida, were tipped off to a sextortion scammer "masquerading as a YouTuber," an ICE press release said. He was first charged in 2020 and was then hit with more charges in 2021.
The investigation took years, authorities said, because police needed time to identify all of Rasheed's victims. Sorting through more than 2,000 images on his seized devices and untangling social media chats across multiple accounts led police to uncover 665 offenses involving 286 victims, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.
According to the AFP, Rasheed would target girls and women on social media who had public friends lists, sending messages that convinced them that he was a famous YouTuber.
Once he gained their trust, he would then barrage the chat with sexual fantasies and doctor screenshots of the chats to make it appear as if the victim had engaged with the explicit messages.
Threatening to send the doctored screenshots to their friends, Rasheed would next make increasingly horrific demands, pushing frightened victims to quickly share sexual content by setting a "countdown timer," ABC reported.
His intent was to degrade victims, Australian district court judge Amanda Burrows said at sentencing, including by forcing children to engage in "distressing" sexual acts involving family pets or other young children at home, ABC reported. He would store and sometimes livestream the videos, once to as many as 98 adults. Some victims became suicidal, but that didn't stop Rasheed's demands, even after victims shared images of self-harm, police found.
Man shared victims’ info in “incel” forums
At sentencing, Burrows said that Rasheed's offenses were of "a degrading, humiliating nature" and that "the conduct involving a family pet" was "particularly abhorrent." His offenses were further aggravated, Burrows said, by livestreaming the content to other pedophiles.
Rasheed had been previously jailed for abuse of a minor while the AFP's investigation of his sextortion scheme was underway. While incarcerated, he participated in a sex offender treatment program but was determined to be at high risk of reoffending.
Burrows also noted at sentencing evidence that Rasheed "had been engaging with misogynistic 'incel' online communities—which promote the view that women are inferior and owe men sex," ABC reported. The AFP found that he had "swapped sextortion strategies" with other men in online forums and shared "details of children who were susceptible to blackmail and abuse." Information about other offenders in contact with Rasheed has been shared with law enforcement in multiple countries, AFP confirmed.
Rasheed will be up for parole as early as 2033, the BBC reported.
AFP assistant commissioner David McLean said Rasheed launched his scheme "for his own sadistic pleasure."
His "abhorrent actions and callous disregard for his victims’ obvious distress, humiliation, and fear made it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia," McLean said, noting that Rasheed's many victims would likely suffer from life-long trauma.
The judge agreed that the harm caused by Rasheed's massive scheme was vast and likely unending, extending Rasheed's sentence to serve as a deterrent to others.
"The victims will forever live with the fear that the recordings you made of them will be [further] disseminated," Burrows told Rasheed.