From a small bedroom in the Lowestoft home he shared with his mother a callous and devious predator destroyed the lives of women across the world.
Anthony ‘Danny’ Burns, a manipulative and prolific online offender has been jailed for 24 years after he lured unsuspecting victims into his web of fear using their own images to belittle and humiliate them.
Burns targeted more than 30 victims, including in Braintree.
But when police arrested him after raiding the unassuming home where his mother confined him and his then girlfriend to a single room they had no idea of the sheer scale of his sickening crimes.
READ MORE: 'Revolting' sex offender who humiliated women and girls jailed for 24 years
A convicted child sex offender, Burns had previously been sentenced for sexual grooming in 2010 and inciting child prostitution in 2013.
But he again came to the attention of investigators after his details were found on devices belonging to notorious online blackmailer Abdul Elahi, from Birmingham, who was jailed for 32 years in 2021 for 158 offences.
“Elahi was engaging with someone on WhatsApp to talk through how they were going to entice a woman in Scotland into carrying out sexual acts and then move towards more obscene graphic degrading offending,” said Robert Slater, National Crime Agency (NCA) operations manager.
“There was a clear conspiracy between the two to target this woman.”
One chilling exchange between the pair ran:
Burns: We can get her now if you want.
Elahi: Pretend to be a modelling booker and we’ve got her. Do video. We get her f****** details now
Burns: OK I got them
Elahi: Social media and address
Burns: OK let’s target
Elahi: Get her full address
“We quickly realised what we had was potentially another Elahi but we only had a small snippet of information which could lead us to his identity,” said Mr Slater.
Investigations led to Burns’ door in Lowestoft
Technical investigations to trace Burns online eventually led police to his door, when first arrested in 2019, Burns claimed that he too was being blackmailed by Elahi - but it quickly became clear he was no victim.
Nigel Whalley, investigator at the NCA’s child exploitation and online protection centre, said 600 contacts - all female names or nicknames - were found on his mobile phone.
The true breakthrough came when investigators worked with police in New Zealand to crack access to his cloud account titled Mack.
READ MORE: Anthony Burns from Lowestoft found guilty of sex abuse
On it they discovered 500,000 files with images and footage of victims forced into carrying out degrading sexual acts; with hundreds of videos that were clearly made by Burns.
He threatened to leak footage online or expose it to the desperate victims’ families, friends and employers unless they posed for increasingly more depraved acts.
One woman in the US was forced into filming herself sexually abusing her eight-year-old child for 28 minutes under the direction of Burns.
“We have videos of girls literally begging him to stop and he just ignored them,” said Mr Whalley.
‘Fear meant it was absolutely impossible to say no’
Burns used multiple different names, addresses, telephone numbers and websites to attempt to contact around 600 women around the world from the UK to as far afield as Australia and America.
He would ask for a copy of their driving licence or passport on the pretext of proving they were over 18.
These details were then used to scour online, searching Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other sites for details of their family and colleagues.
“That is how he blackmailed so many. It was absolutely impossible to say no for these victims because of the fear of what their parents, friends and family would think of them,” said Mr Whalley.
But while Elahi was content to offend online, Burns would always want to meet his victims.
“He even went to the length of booking hotel rooms trying to arrange for them to travel under the pretext of being a sugar-daddy sending a photographer to vet you or a modelling agent sending a photographer,” said Mr Whalley.
Two online predators shared blackmail techniques
It became clear to investigators that he had learnt online blackmail techniques from Elahi, using fake profiles on dating and so-called sugar daddy sites to lure vulnerable victims into sharing initially only cheeky or suggestive images.
“There was almost a tutor pupil relationship; however the relationship broke down very quickly,” said Mr Slater, who led the complex investigation.
“Elahi thought Burns was just some sort of idiot trying to copy what he was doing, and Burns walked away and went on his own.”
His own favourite method was to portray himself as a successful businessman running a modelling agency. On other occasions he adopted other fake personas including on one occasion even pretending to be an NCA officer.
His end result was also the same: to lure women into sending enough explicit material that he could then use it to blackmail them.
Hunt to find ‘broken’ victims across the world
The scale and global nature of his offending left officers with a mammoth and complicated task of identifying and tracing traumatised victims.
Mr Whalley said: “Some came forward, some were reluctant and almost in denial about what had happened to them. In some cases they didn’t want us to take it any further but fortunately 36 did.”
READ MORE: Woman shares terrifying ordeal with an online sex blackmailer
One of his victims, Sophie Goodall, who waived her right to anonymity to share her story, said she had been left “absolutely terrified”.
She said: “It was like a barrage of all these different people who were all him, just saying the same thing, sending me disgusting messages, disgusting photos, and wouldn’t leave me alone.
“I was really scared that he would turn up at my house.”
Eight of his victims were brave enough to face Burns in court to detail the devastating impact his callous offending has had.
Many others have been left deeply traumatised.
“These are broken people,” said Mr Slater. “These are some who are left on the edge of suicide. They have lost all faith in life. They are reluctant to leave home in case someone sees them and recognises them from their images circulating online. The impact on them simply cannot be understated.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here