Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed has been sentenced to 17 years in jail over what has been described as one of Australia's worst online child sexual abuse schemes.

The now 29-year-old targeted hundreds of victims in Australia and overseas by pretending to be a teenage social media influencer.


Australian Federal Police Commissioner David McLean described the case as one of the worst sextortion cases in history.

The AFP worked with United States Homeland Security Investigations and Interpol to investigate reports that an Australian man was sextorting girls through social media.

AFP officers in WA worked with police in multiple countries to identify victims and check on their welfare.


Rasheed would contact young females who had visible friend lists on social media and tried to befriend them before manipulating them into providing him with explicit content.

He would then blackmail them into providing increasingly sexual and degrading videos and threatened to send earlier explicit content to their family and friends.

A Canadian victim told police she was 13 years old when someone she thought was a 15-year-old social media celebrity contacted her online.

But it was Rasheed, who asked her sexually explicit questions before sending edited screen shots of the conversation that depicted the victim liking his sexual fantasies.

Rasheed then threatened to send the doctored images to her friends and family unless she complied with his demands for sexually explicit videos.

On occasions, he forced victims to perform sexual acts on camera, in one instance it was viewed by almost 100 other people.

He also talked to other child sex offenders online, swapping sextortion strategies and the details of children who were susceptible to blackmail and abuse.

The AFP first charged Rasheed when he was aged 25, in September 2020 and laid further charges in 2021.

Bring back the rope.