A sexual predator has been sentenced to jail for eight and a half years for blackmailing and spying on Muslim women.

Farhan Miza of Abertillery, Blaenau Gwent, reportedly filmed unsuspecting women in secrets and threatened to share the intimate photos and footage before demanding that they give him money.

Like Us on Facebook

The 38-year-old, who had denied the charges, met some of his victims on online dating sites.

During his trial, jurors at the Cardiff Crown Court were told that Mirza would initially try to impress women by claiming that he was a doctor. In fact, he would even hang surgical scrubs in his wardrobe and also carried a stethoscope in his car to complete the complex ruse. He even boasted that his family was full of professionals with high educational achievements working in various places in the world.

It later turned out that he was an IT worker, who also moonlighted as a taxi driver. He also did not own a home and was living with his mother.

Jurors were told that he targeted Muslim women because of the terror and embarrassment they would have to face had their intimate photos and videos been released on the Internet.

Mirza's duplicity was exposed after one of his would-be victims found 70,000 pounds (around $87,000) in cash as well as numerous photos of naked women at his home. A video of herself whose existence she did not know about was also in the stash.

After realizing that his game was up, Mirza threatened to release the video.

The woman, on the other hand, said that she was fearful of reprisals from ultra-religious groups if her video was released to her Pakistani family, but she eventually decided to go to the police.

While delivering the sentence, judge Tom Crowther said of Mirza's 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," the judge added.

TagsSexual Harassment, Society news