Juneau (Alaska): A Bangladeshi national was flown into Alaska in the US from Malaysia to face charges of child sexual exploitation. The 28-year-old allegedly used social media to trick teenage girls into sending him sexually explicit images. He then threatened to share them with their friends and family if they didn’t send more.
Zobaidul Amin allegedly adopted false identities, and often posed as a teenager, to trick victims into sending him explicit images, the Associated Press (AP) has quoted US prosecutors as saying.
Amin, who studied medicine in Malaysia, was flown to Alaska from Kuala Lumpur to face the federal charges. He pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance.
“The FBI’s commitment to protecting our children from exploitation doesn’t change whether an offender is here in the United States or overseas,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a news release, as reported by Mint.
Amin delighted in sexually abusing hundreds of minor victims over social media. “He bragged about causing victims to become suicidal and engage in self-harm”, US prosecutors said in a detention memorandum.
He allegedly shared hundreds of nude images and videos of minor victims all over the internet and encouraged other perpetrators to do the same, they said.
Amin first came under the spotlight after a 14-year-old girl from Alaska first reported him to law enforcement. The minor claimed that after she stopped communicating with Amin, he followed through on his threats by sending her pornographic images to friends and followers.
Amin was indicted on charges including child pornography, cyberstalking and wire fraud by a federal grand jury in 2022.
Investigators eventually learned his identity and realised he had done similar things to hundreds of minor victims, prosecutors said. Amin told his victims that the only way to get him to stop demanding more images was to recruit other victims, prosecutors said.
The Bangladeshi considered himself untouchable by law enforcement as he was in Malaysia and his victims were primarily in the US, prosecutors wrote.
“In one conversation, he told a minor victim that the ‘cops won’t do anything,’ and the ‘cops won’t track me down because I live no where near you,” the prosecution said.
Efforts to extradite Amin failed, but Malaysian authorities brought charges with the help of the FBI, the Department of Justice said. He was released on bail during the proceedings, and the US eventually succeeded in having him expelled from Malaysia. The FBI then took him into custody and flew him to Alaska.
