Prime Suspect: Hunting the Predators

With unprecedented access, this documentary series enters the dark world of the biggest online predators investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Gripping bodycam footage shows NCA officers arrest respected university researcher and lecturer Matthew Falder. Never-seen-before archive of Falder's interview, records how he boasted to his victims that he would never be caught. Falder is revealed to have over 14,000 indecent images and 1,251 videos of children. And his online alias, 666Devil, targeted victims worldwide. Compelling NCA surveillance footage reveals that Falder is carrying out his double life, unaware that the net was closing in.

For two women, Hayley and Sophie, online relationships take a darker coercive turn. Like countless others, they have fallen victim to predator Anthony Burns. Unseen interviews carried out with Burns while on remand in prison, reveal how he's not the handsome millionaire he claimed to be. Instead, Burns is a serial 'catfish' and blackmailer, who controls and abuses his victims through deception and threats. When Burns is arrested by the NCA, they uncover his secret cloud account with over half a million images and videos of female and child sexual abuse. It's evidence he's a calculating blackmailer who screen records abuse for his own sexual gratification.

What begins as a simple arrest becomes the NCA's biggest investigation as Abdul Elahi, their most prolific online predator, describes how he targeted and abused vulnerable children and women. With Elahi's confession to so many crimes the race is on to identify victims, gather evidence, seek charges and bring justice for all those he abused. With 74 victims from across the globe identified, the NCA are able to proceed with charges, but the case takes a disturbing twist as Elahi's criminality moves from online to the real world as he sexually assaults a vulnerable person he meets on the street.