A paedophile maths teacher who posed as a teenage boy to groom and rape schoolgirls across Britain has been handed a combined 25-year custodial sentence after a campaign of sexual abuse against 18 vulnerable teenagers. 

Syed Shahreear Ahmed, 37, spent four years using fake social media profiles and heavily doctored photographs to convince girls as young as 13 that he was a 17-year-old boy called 'Miles', before luring them into meeting him with promises of gifts, money and romantic relationships.

But behind the carefully constructed online persona was a secondary school teacher who secretly travelled across the country to prey on vulnerable children, sometimes arranging to meet multiple girls on the same day.

At Southwark Crown Court yesterday, Judge Perrins imposed a further ten-year custodial term, to run consecutively to the 15 years Ahmed was already serving, bringing his total custodial sentence to 25 years, with an additional eight years on licence.

The judge ruled that Ahmed remained a danger to the public and revealed that, had all his offences been sentenced together, he would have had little hesitation in imposing a life sentence.

He described the offending as a 'sustained and calculated campaign to groom and sexually abuse as many young girls as you possibly could'.

The judge also condemned Ahmed's complete lack of remorse, telling him: 'You have failed to take any responsibility for your actions and you have shown absolutely no remorse.'

Now, detectives have revealed the extraordinary lengths they went to expose his crimes, including trawling through hundreds of gigabytes of digital evidence, examining thousands of photographs and even using graffiti beneath a motorway bridge to pinpoint the remote location where one victim was raped.

Yet officers fear the true scale of his offending could be even greater, with photographs of another 20 to 30 unidentified girls discovered on his electronic devices.

The impact of his crimes was laid bare in court as one victim described suffering terrifying nightmares and feeling unable to trust even members of her own family.

'The incident comes back to me in my dreams in extreme detail, I wake up drenched in sweat of having wet myself,' she said.

She described the trauma as feeling 'like someone throwing a brick at me', adding: 'I no longer trust anyone because of the situation with him, even my male family members if we are left alone together I feel like I am on edge. I feel like I am stuck in a cage with a shark and no way out.'

Another victim revealed she had been forced to abandon her education and was now struggling to find work.

'After the incident I dropped out of college, this has had a huge effect on me and now I am struggling to find employment,' she said.

'I struggle to trust anyone now. At night I struggle to sleep regularly, I get a lot of flashbacks. I can just picture it happening again and again in my head.'

Other victims described struggling to eat or sleep, with some prescribed antidepressants following their ordeals.

Ahmed, who taught maths at a secondary school in Essex, used apps including Wizz, Yubo and Snapchat to approach girls aged between 13 and 16, often exploiting their loneliness and insecurities to win their trust.

He would flatter them, promise shopping trips and gifts, and suggest they could have a future together before steering conversations towards sexual topics.

Detective Constable Adam Conibeere described the scale of his online grooming as relentless: 'It was just constant. It was nonstop,' he said.

Ahmed used multiple Snapchat accounts, sometimes changing identities to contact girls who had become suspicious of him, while exploiting location-sharing features to discover where they lived.

The judge said Ahmed had been particularly skilled at identifying vulnerable teenagers, telling him: 'You understood teenagers well. You were skilled at spotting those whose insecurities could be manipulated to serve your own sexual desires.'

He added: 'It is no coincidence that the majority of your victims were teenage girls who were lonely, isolated and suffered from low self-esteem. You knew this and you preyed upon it.'

Five girls in his second trial were persuaded to meet him in person, with Ahmed driving them to secluded locations including woodland, an empty flat, a summerhouse and isolated car parks.

One 15-year-old was repeatedly raped after Ahmed drove her to remote woodland, threatening her with consequences if she told anybody what had happened.

On another occasion, he took her to a summerhouse at his home, where he put his hand around her neck so tightly she could not speak before raping her.

A second 15-year-old was raped in the back of his car after travelling to Cambridge to meet the boy she believed was 17.

Ahmed subsequently gave her £20, but when she refused to see him again, he bombarded her with threatening messages, warning that he would send somebody to confront her parents.

He was also convicted of blackmail in relation to the threats.

The teenager eventually confided in a school friend and then the friend's mother, Nina, who has spoken to the Daily Mail about the disturbing conversation that helped expose the predator.

Nina recalled the frightened girl arriving at her home early one morning, desperate for advice after Ahmed threatened to reveal what had happened.

'He had a map of the position of where she roughly lived, and he'd sent that to her. So she was obviously worried,' Nina said.

'She didn't want to go, but she obviously just felt intimidated, and I think she just wanted to know what to do, really.'

Nina, who had experience of safeguarding through her work in a school, became concerned that the person behind the messages was not who he claimed to be.

'I said I think we ought to phone the police possibly because this could happen to other girls or have happened to girls in the past,' she recalled.

However, Nina claims that when she initially contacted police, a call handler told her she could not report the matter because she was not the teenager's legal guardian.

The girl's parents subsequently reported the matter.

Meanwhile, another teenager had endured a terrifying encounter with Ahmed after agreeing to meet the person she believed was a teenage boy.

When she realised he was much older than he had claimed, she became frightened, and after he touched her despite her objections, she demanded to be let out of his car.

She eventually escaped the vehicle by jumping out while it was still moving, and providing police with a crucial lead that helped them trace Ahmed through its registration number.

Ahmed was then arrested in May 2023 because he was insured to drive the vehicle, but he refused to provide the PINs or passwords to his devices and answered no comment during police interviews.

Although Ahmed was acquitted of kidnapping in relation to the incident, after claiming he had accidentally taken a wrong turn, the girl's escape helped police identify the man behind the fake profiles.

As investigators began examining his devices, they discovered that the two complaints were merely the beginning of a much larger case.

The investigation was transferred to the Met's specialist team after senior officers recognised the potential scale of the offending, which stretched across several police force areas.

DC Conibeere explained: 'So over the course of the investigation, there were a number of arrests. With each arrest came new devices and new evidence to kind of work backwards to identify children and victims with whom he'd been in contact.'

Officers reconstructed years of messages, photographs, videos and location data, discovering that Ahmed had been grooming numerous girls simultaneously.

The painstaking work revealed a predator who was simultaneously grooming numerous girls, sometimes switching between conversations with different victims while arranging to meet another.

In one particular example, detectives discovered a screen recording showing Ahmed messaging one girl whom he was meeting on a Saturday morning while simultaneously asking another whether she could meet him that afternoon.

His methods were carefully calculated to protect his identity.

Before meeting girls, he would frequently change the agreed meeting point at the last minute, instructing them to walk towards another street while he watched from a distance.

Investigators believe he was checking that the girls were alone and had not been accompanied by undercover officers or vigilante groups attempting to catch him.

The judge said the level of planning was significant, describing how Ahmed had created multiple false identities, retained sexual images and videos, and driven considerable distances to abuse his victims.

He added that Ahmed had deliberately taken girls to isolated locations 'where they felt disoriented and were unable to escape or summon help'.

Despite his profession, there was no evidence that Ahmed abused pupils at his own school.

However, the court heard that he had completed safeguarding training covering grooming and sexual exploitation, knowledge that prosecutors argued made his offending particularly serious. 

School officials subsequently gave evidence confirming that he had completed and passed the required assessments.

Prosecutors argued that his position as a teacher, combined with his knowledge of safeguarding procedures and the considerable age gap between himself and his victims, made his offending particularly serious.

But it was the combination of digital forensics and traditional detective work that ultimately helped officers reconstruct some of his most serious crimes.

One girl described being taken to a secluded wooded area where she was raped, but years had passed since the attack and she could not identify the precise location.

Rather than force her to revisit the traumatic scene, detectives used her recollections and Google Street View to retrace the journey.

She remembered passing beneath the A12, crossing a bridge and seeing distinctive graffiti, all of which officers were able to locate.

Investigators then created visual walkthroughs of the location to show jurors how isolated the area was and why the victim would have felt unable to escape.

The same girl also described being taken to an outbuilding at Ahmed's family home, where she was raped.

She recalled being made to wait beside the property before being hurried across the garden when nobody was watching.

Armed with her account, officers obtained a warrant and returned to the property with digital forensic specialists to document the scene.

Even apparently insignificant details in photographs became crucial evidence, with specialist officers examining school uniforms, road signs and other objects visible in the background of images to identify potential victims.

Yet despite the enormous amount of evidence examined, officers believe there may still be dozens of girls who have never been identified.

DC Conibeere said: 'There are images on his phone of other girls in his car, or in a wooded area, or in an address that we don't know where it is that appear to be 16 or under, and we have no way of identifying who they are.'

Some photographs have been carefully bookmarked according to distinctive features, including one girl identified in police records by her large gold hoop earrings, so they can be revisited if further witnesses come forward.

The detective estimated there could be 'between 20 and 30 more girls' whose identities remain unknown, although officers do not know whether all were underage or had been sexually abused.

Ahmed's behaviour during the court proceedings was also described by investigators as persistently disruptive.

Detectives said he repeatedly shouted out during evidence, causing the judge to remove the jury on several occasions, and dismissed legal teams ahead of key hearings.

At his second trial, he eventually represented himself for part of the proceedings and personally cross-examined one of the detectives who had helped bring him to justice.

He also refused to cooperate with probation officers on three occasions, meaning no pre-sentence report was prepared for his latest sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors argued that his repeated offending, manipulation of vulnerable children and previous finding of dangerousness demonstrated that he posed a significant risk of serious harm to the public.

Officers said Ahmed continued to deny much of his offending, alleging that police had manipulated the victims' accounts.

Asked whether he had shown remorse, DC Conibeere replied: 'No remorse really.'

For the girls he targeted, however, the consequences have been devastating, with some continuing to receive counselling and support years after the abuse.

One victim told the court she had been 'frightened he would find out' that she had spoken to police, while others described suffering flashbacks, sleepless nights and profound difficulties trusting those around them.

Nina, whose intervention helped bring Ahmed to the attention of police, urged parents to take a greater interest in their children's online lives and make sure they feel able to speak openly when something is wrong.

She said: 'I would just say to be aware of who your children are talking to, what apps they've got on their phones.'

Lettice.bromovsky@dailymail.co.uk