A cab driver, who pretended to be a doctor to target Muslim women, has been put behind bars for eight and a half years. Farhan Mirza, 38, was convicted on charges of sexual assault, blackmail, voyeurism, theft and fraud against three victims by Judge Tom Crowther at the Cardiff Crown Court who called his actions "pure misogyny".
Using a false profile on a dating website, Mirza met women who were looking for long-term relationships and impressed and manipulated them into sex. To make his lie believable, he even hung surgical scrubs in his wardrobe and carried a stethoscope. Mirza secretly filmed himself having sex with the women and later used the videos to blackmail his victims. He threatened to send the videos to one of his victim's relatives in Pakistan, where she feared they could be targeted by extremist religious groups.
One of his victims went to the police after she discovered 70,000 pounds in cash at his house and intimate images of herself and other woman. A medida report quoted prosecutor Timoth Evans as telling the court, "It is the prosecution's case that Mr Mirza is a particular kind of sexual predator and he chooses his victims carefully. Because of their religious and ethnic backgrounds, he targeted them because of the terror, embarrassment and humiliation that each of these ladies would have felt in their minds by what this defendant did to them."
