A former maths teacher already serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex offences has been jailed for a further 10 years after being convicted of 37 more sexual offences against 12 teenage girls.

Syed Shahreear Ahmed, 38, of Ilford, east London, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday 5 November to a 13-year sentence, made up of 10 years in custody and three years on extended licence. The offences included rape, sexual assault, sexual activity with a child, making indecent images of a child and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Ahmed was a maths teacher at a secondary school in Essex until he resigned after his arrest in May 2023. He was first sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2025 for serious sexual offences against girls. The latest convictions followed a second trial, at which a jury found him guilty on 10 July.

Fake identities used to target girls online

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation team found that Ahmed used fake online identities on popular social media apps, with altered photographs, to pose as a teenage boy and groom girls aged between 13 and 16. He arranged meetings with some of his victims and sexually abused them.

The 37 offences in the second trial included seven counts of rape, six sexual assaults, six counts of sexual communication with a child and five counts of making indecent images of children. He was also convicted of meeting children following sexual grooming, taking indecent images, blackmail and causing or inciting children to engage in sexual activity.

Further investigations uncovered 12 additional victims, with offences hidden in hundreds of gigabytes of digital evidence taken from Ahmed's mobile phones. In total, police say he has now been convicted of 56 child sexual abuse offences relating to 18 victims.

Police warn parents over online grooming

Detective Chief Inspector Brian Kelleher, from the Met's Specialist Crime Command, said the investigation showed how offenders could use social media to reach children, and urged parents to be alert to online grooming. Claire Brinton, a specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service's Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, said Ahmed had targeted vulnerable girls and manipulated them into sexual activity.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the case underlined the importance of reporting concerns about online contact between adults and children, and that victims in the case were entitled to lifelong anonymity.