Farhan Mirza, 38, of Abertillery, Blaenau Gwent, has been jailed for eight and a half years for blackmailing and spying on Muslim women using intimate photographs and videos he took of them without their knowledge. He threatened to share the footage before demanding money. He was jailed for voyeurism, blackmail, theft and fraud at Cardiff Crown Court.
Mirza, who denied the charges, met some of the women on online dating sites.
Mirza had initially impressed his victims by claiming to be a doctor, hung surgical scrubs in his wardrobe and carried a stethoscope in his car. He also claimed his family were highly educated professionals working around the world. He was, in fact, an IT worker at a college, worked as a part time taxi driver and lived with his mother.
Jurors heard the “sexual predator” targeted Muslim women because of the “terror” and “embarrassment” they would have felt at having intimate photos and videos made public.
But his lies were exposed after one of his victims found £70,000 in cash and hundreds of images of naked women, including a video of herself which she knew nothing about, at his home. After the discovery, she said he threatened to blackmail her and she feared reprisals from ultra-religious groups such as the Taliban if a video of her was sent to her Pakistani family. She eventually went to the police who discovered other women had been blackmailed by Mirza.
Sentencing Mirza, judge Tom Crowther said in the case of his first victim, “you wanted to take her for everything you could get. That demonstrates the pure misogyny of how you were living off this scheme”.
PC Pat Maguire, the officer in charge of the investigation for Gwent Police said Mirza was “manipulative, deceitful and callous and had shown no remorse for his actions throughout this investigation. I would like to thank the victims for their courage to come forward and report these offences to the police. They have shown great bravery and dignity throughout.
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