HE is Britain’s most prolific online sex blackmailer, preying on nearly 2,000 victims worldwide – all from behind a phone and laptop at his parents’ home.
Sadistic predator Abdul Elahi trawled social media and ‘sugar daddy’ sites – where older men send money to younger users – to hunt for underage girls and vulnerable women.
PAAdbul Elahi abused thousands of underage girls and vulnerable women[/caption]
C5Elahi used a fake profile on Sugar Daddy websites to lure in victims[/caption]
BBCA victim previously told the BBC of the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of Elahi[/caption]
From his bedroom in Birmingham, he posed as a wealthy businessman, luring victims into sending proof of ID and promising them cash in exchange for lingerie photos.
Once they complied, he blackmailed them into filming degrading sexual acts – including self-harm and incest – which he then sold to other abusers in sick box sets.
“On his phone, at any one given time, he could be abusing 40 or 50 different victims across the world,” says Robert Slater, Senior Investigating Officer at the National Crime Agency.
Elahi threatened to expose victims to their family or post footage of them online if they did not follow his orders, leaving some victims on the verge of suicide.
Robert adds: “He almost had a script, which he would cut and paste from one communication to the other. He was so prolific in his offending.”
Robert was part of the months-long investigation by the NCA – dubbed the British FBI, which deals with the nation’s most complex crimes – that saw Elahi, then 26, jailed for 32 years in 2021.
The painstaking case is explored in a gripping new episode of Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predators, which airs tonight on Channel 5.
As Adrian Langdale, a CPS prosecutor, summarises: “We lived this investigation, it took over our lives.
“Cases like this will haunt you to your dying days.”
Abdul Elahi was working and studying when he discovered a sugar daddy app in early 2018, according to a later police interview.
He claimed girls and women – many of whom were university students – would contact him via the app asking for help.
From there, he’d quickly move the conversation to WhatsApp where he’d ask their age and “financial situation”.
“Depending on how broke they were I’d know how [far] they were willing to go,” he said in the police interview.
Elahi used an alias and posed as a “jet-setting businessman” who was prepared to give those on sugar daddy sites money if they sent “mildly sexualised” content, offering £50 to £200 a time – though he never paid any of them.
Chillingly, from there, he would blackmail them into committing horrific acts, including the abuse of children.
Andy Peach, NCA Investigations Supervisor says: “He would take [victims] through some very basic requests, ‘show me your favourite underwear’.
“Then he might ask for a topless photograph […] Eventually, slowly but surely, the images will become evermore sexualised.”
Sextortion horror
Elahi demanded his victims sent their social media links and photos of their ID – in some instances telling girls he had OCD and “just needed to know who the person was”.
Once sent, he had “the weapon he could use” to incite them into sicker acts.
Screengrabs show how he ordered one victim to cut her breasts and demanded another sent 20 “sex slave” videos, threatening to post them on pornography platforms if they did not comply.
“Faced with that predicament, many of the victims were by now desperate but felt they had no option but to carry out his wishes,” Andy explains, adding: “He had a massive sadistic streak. He got off on degrading these victims.”
He continued undetected until December 2018, when US law enforcement alerted the NCA about a 15-year-old who had accused Elahi of “horrendous offending”.
Elahi was alleged to have asked the girl for ID then offered money for a topless photo, before demanding that she film herself committing incest.
The teenager eventually “broke down” and confided in her parents, kicking off the investigation.
“Their original request was to gather evidence on their behalf with the sole intention of getting that individual extradited and prosecuted over in the US,” Robert explains.
C5From left to right: Shaun Juranisz, NCA Victim Care Officer; Andy Peach, Investigating Supervisor; and Robert Slater, NCA Senior Manager[/caption]
Elahi was arrested at home in Birmingham for online grooming and blackmail of a child.
In his first police interview Elahi admitted to the acts and revealed he “knew [the victim] was underage from the start.”
Officers asked Elahi how many other girls he had offered money to engage in sex acts – the expectation, the NCA’s Andy says, being that he might say “another two or three”.
Instead he admitted to “hundreds” or possibly even “a thousand”.
Despite the brazen admission, on December 20 Elahi was released under strict police bail conditions pending further enquiries.
He was banned from unsupervised access to children and ordered to sign at the police station twice a week, with online access limited.
“It’s not a perfect world because if Elahi went out and brought a phone and hid it and used it not at his home address there’s no way we would have known about that,” Andy says.
Having already seized Elahi’s phones, the NCA visited his home where they recovered three laptops and two more phones for submission to its forensics team.
They recovered 97 WhatsApp chats showing the brute was blackmailing scores of women and girls to provide him with graphic images.
His phones had “millions” of potentially indecent images of children.
Officers realised they were dealing with “a really high risk offender with multiple victims, pretty much spread across the globe,” Robert says.
NCA Investigator Jane Lawrenson was brought on to approach and look after victims.
“All we may have had is a first name and a phone number,” she recalls. “It must be awful for anybody to be contacted by a law enforcement officer and to say, we have found your phone number on somebody’s phone that we’re worried about.”
The race was on to find victims and safeguard them. Jane recalls one case in which a victim was asked to strip and perform a number of degrading acts. Screenshots show how Elahi demanded she take laxatives and “cry” – despite her begging him to stop.
“The reason [she sent] these images is because she was being blackmailed,” Jane says.
By February 2019, two months after Elahi was arrested and bailed, the NCA had acquired statements from seven victims.
Thousands of victims
Officers requested that the Crown Prosecution Service allow them to charge Elahi so he could be remanded in custody – arguing that he was a prolific offender with potentially 1,000 victims.
The CPS insisted more work was needed to investigate and contact those victims before charges could be authorised.
Robert admits his team was “frustrated”. He says: “The risk was real and evident that this serious, dangerous individual was still out there on the streets.”
Later, once officers had witness statements from 30 victims, the NCA re-approached the CPS – only to be told again that charges could not happen until the “full extent” of Elahi’s criminality had been investigated.
The decision piled extra pressure on investigators, officers say, as victims could not understand why Elahi had not been prosecuted.
In June 2019, after six months on bail, Elahi was brought in for more questioning following the discovery of new international victims.
Asked about what he made one victim do, Elahi said: “She did pretty much every single messed up thing I’ve asked all the girls to do, apart from cutting.”
Steps to Keep Your Child Safe From Grooming
By Emma Kenny, true crime psychologist and parenting expert
Encourage your child to share their day-to-day experiences. Ask who they talked to on the way home, what happened at the bus stop, and if anything made them feel uncomfortable. The more openly you talk, the more confident they’ll be to speak up if something feels off.
If possible, arrange for your child to walk or travel with friends. Identify safe spaces along the route, trusted neighbours or shops where they can go if they feel threatened.
Groomers often switch to online contact once they’ve made initial in-person connections. Monitor your child’s digital devices in a respectful but proactive way. Agree on ground rules for social media use, and encourage them to show you anything that makes them feel uneasy.
If your parental alarm bells are going off, do not dismiss those feelings. Challenge unusual behaviour or new relationships gently but firmly. Seek professional advice if you suspect your child is at risk.
If you have any evidence or strong suspicions that someone is grooming your child, contact the police immediately. Support and guidance from organisations like the NSPCC or Barnardo’s can also be invaluable in helping you navigate this distressing situation.
He listed acts including gagging and incest.
In a number of cases Elahi incited his victims to sexually abuse their siblings or children as young as toddlers – or, in one sickening case, a nine-month-old baby.
In another exchange he made a 13-year-old girl send videos abusing her brother, messaging: “Do it with your brother or else”.
He ordered another adult victim to “get your son and do as I say” before telling her to engage in sexual activity with him.
In December 2019, almost a year after Elahi was first arrested, the NCA – who by then had 74 alleged victims – returned again to the CPS to seek permission to charge him.
It agreed to employ a QC – now a KC – which Andy described as a “huge relief.”
Sickening payments
At some point his offending became “financially driven”, with Adrian Langdale, CPS Prosecutor, describing how Elahif logged footage to other predators and even took requests.
“He had the commercial nous in relation to his abuse to be able to put forward what he described as ‘box sets’,” Adrian says.
Elahi admitted sending one customer “50 albums of British girls” that subsequently appeared on porn sites.
He was paid via PayPal and later Amazon vouchers which he would sell under false names to get cash, making an estimated £40,000 a year.
In some cases, customers could pay for the ID documents of the girls, enabling other “sick individuals to re-victimise” them.
Elahi’s hold over victims was absolute.
Jane says: “I’ve never, in my whole experience of being a law enforcement officer, come across so many people who he’s affected so badly that they would either a) self harm, or b) try and take their own lives.”
SWNSKirsty Nicholls admitted working with Elahi to make indecent images of a child and sexually assaulting a child[/caption]
National Crime AgencyAshley Corbin paid Elahi £295 in Amazon vouchers and £40 via PayPal for sexual footage of girls[/caption]
Even Elahi admitted in interviews that he was “surprised” none of the girls killed themselves.
In August 2020, the Met Police arrested Elahi for sexual assault of an “incredibly vulnerable” woman in an alleyway in London.
It showed he was escalating his offending, providing the “smoking gun” to finally charge him with multiple offences and remand him at HMP Birmingham.
Despite Elahi’s admissions during each interview, officers still had to plan for a trial.
One challenge they faced was that Elahi had learned to delete his threats on WhatsApp moments after sending them, meaning many victims had only partial logs.
Police breakthrough
The breakthrough came because some logs hadn’t been deleted, allowing officers to “make sense” of the jigsaw.
Adrian adds: “Blackmail was the core offence running through. So where he’d blackmailed victims, he’d extorted them.”
In June 2021 Elahi pleaded guilty to 158 offences – the largest number any individual has faced in the UK – at Birmingham Crown Court.
It took a custody officer an hour and seven minutes to read out the charges.
A number of the victims submitted impact statements to be considered during sentencing in December 2021.
Four of them even faced Elahi in court, with one – a schoolgirl at the time of the offences – telling how she tried to take an overdose after he shared footage of her online.
He remained impassive during their statements. “A soulless individual with no empathy,” Robert summarises.
Jailing him for 32 years, Judge Sarah Buckingham concluded that Elahi remained a risk to the public and passed an extended sentence, meaning he will serve at least two-thirds in prison before being considered for parole.
Robert says the sentence was “unusually high” for an online offender, and investigators and and victims were satisfied.
“What I got from [the victims] was a genuine sense of relief and a genuine sense that they were pleased with what we’ve achieved for them,” he says.
“And that, again, is something I’m very proud of.”
Unsurprisingly, the harrowing case has left an impact on those who worked on it.
“Will I be the same as I ever was? No, never,” Jane says. “I was living it every day, I couldn’t get away from it. And it really did make me ill.”
Chillingly, the rise of online crime is “swamping law enforcement,” leaving agencies like the NCA struggling to keep up.
Robert adds: “My personal fear is the internet creates an opportunity that never existed before.
“And that opportunity is for individuals who are socially inept to go and ruin people’s lives.”
Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predators is on Channel 5 tonight at 10pm.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
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