Man admits to using webcam for sex blackmail
Author: Barbara Brown, The Hamilton Spectator
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A judge said he thought he'd seen every dirty trick a person could pull with a computer, until 26-year-old Ali Ashraf appeared before him charged with extortion and voyeurism.

"This is appalling," declared Ontario Court Justice Don Cooper. "Every time I think I've seen everything people can do with computers, somebody takes my breath away."

Ashraf pleaded guilty months ago, admitting to blackmailing a young Toronto woman by threatening to make public his secret webcam recordings of the pair having sex in his bedroom.

He returns to court April 24 to be sentenced for the extortion, along with a second count involving voyeuristic webcam recordings he made of the woman and three others with whom he had sex.

In Canada, it's a criminal offence to surreptitiously make a visual recording of someone in circumstances where that person has a reason to expect privacy. The offence carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison.

Assistant Crown attorney Craig Fraser said Ashraf was effectively blackmailing the woman, not for money but for more sex. She had met him in April 2006 on an Internet chat room used by college and university students. The following month, she agreed to meet Ashraf in person at the Hamilton GO station.

The pair returned to his apartment where they later had consensual sex.

"(She) had no idea that the web camera was set up to take pictures of them engaged in this activity," Fraser said.

The woman agreed to meet Ashraf a second time at her apartment in Toronto, but as time wore on, she grew more distant.

Ashraf kept e-mailing, asking for another date. While in Toronto that July, he text-messaged the woman. She responded by forwarding an item downloaded from the Internet that she also sent to her family and friends. Attached to the e-mail was a list of e-mail addresses for everyone who was sent the item from her.

A few months later, the woman got an e-mail from Ashraf that had three digital photographs attached.

"Mr. Ashraf stated in the e-mail that if (she) did not meet him in a hotel room, and essentially (let him) be compensated sexually, then he would show 200 pictures of them having sexual intercourse to her family and friends," Fraser said.

The woman panicked, then called Toronto police. An officer, in turn, contacted Hamilton police.

Ashraf had given the woman an Oct. 29 deadline. If she did not rent them a hotel room by then, he would e-mail the photos to her relatives and friends.

What Ashraf did not know was that the woman was working with police to set a trap for him. She agreed to meet him at the GO Station on Hunter Street and asked him to bring his laptop. Ashraf was arrested on Oct. 29, 2006, and his laptop was seized by police.

A forensic audit of the computer revealed other victims of Ashraf's voyeurism, although none of the three identified woman caught by his bedside webcam complained of being extorted when contacted by police.

"It was the police view from viewing much of the material on Mr. Ashraf's computer that there were significantly more victims, perhaps as many as 13," Fraser said.

Defence lawyer Don Clarke said his client claimed he only e-mailed the three digital photos to the first woman and did not distribute any other compromising photos of the women on Internet.

"But how do we know that?" asked Cooper. "How do we know he hasn't splashed them all over the Internet?"

bbrown@thespec.com

905-526-3494

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