Indian student who posed as teenage schoolboy to trick 70 girls into sending naked photos jailed for 30 years

An Indian student who posed as a teenage schoolboy to trick 70 girls into sending him naked photos has been jailed for 30 years.

Bilal Kazi, 27, had overstayed his visa when he preyed on vulnerable teens while pretending to be a white, blond schoolboy called Reece.

The child sex offender acted as their online boyfriend, acting as if they were in a genuine relationship, demanding they send him explicit material of themselves via apps like Snapchat, Chester Crown Court heard.

He admitted to 33 child sex offences relating to 19 victims, including causing a child to engage in penetrative sexual activity.

The paedophile also admitted making indecent images of children and six counts of blackmail between 2021 and 2025.

Victims then sent more material to the predator after Kazi threatened to leak the photos and videos online.

The man leaked naked footage of two girls, who were then left suicidal, the court heard.

The sex offender also told a 13-year-old that she should send the explicit material because that is what people did when they were in love.

Another girl was groomed on Snapchat and, after her friends logged into her account and saw the explicit video she sent, she said her "whole world fell apart".

In a victim impact statement, the girl said: "I was young and I didn’t know any better. I became a joke overnight, like I had done something wrong. I was just a kid."

The court heard the girl lost her friends and fell into a bout of severe depression, taking an overdose.

The true number of the predator's victims could be as many as 180, who were not identified during the trial.

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Another victim's Snapchat account was hacked by the predator, who then went on to post the naked video she had sent the man from Mumbai.

When the girl's mother found the vile messages from Kazi, she alerted police in May 2022.

Upon investigation, Kazi was found to have been living in Chester - and was arrested at Heathrow airport when he returned from visiting family members in Kuwait.

While out on bail, he continued to target vulnerable teens before he was rearrested and remanded into custody in 2025.

Cops found hundreds of category A child sex abuse videos involving teenage girls - with around 9,000 messages exchanged with one girl alone over the span of three weeks.

The victims' ages ranged from between 10 and 17.

Judge Steven Everett, Recorder of Chester, threw the paedophile behind bars for 30 years, said: "That’s the sad feature. He’s taken away their childhoods.

"You took advantage of what appears to me a lack of proper security on social media sites which should have been there to prevent young persons being taken advantage of by sexual predators like you.

"It is incomprehensible why any person would do what you did to these 19 different young girls and we have no idea how many others.

"We will never know how many victims have fallen prey to you. You are a very dangerous person."