This article originally appeared on InvestigateWest.

SEATTLE, WA – Three years after Hannah Power told police that a man she met on Tinder had trafficked her at a hotel outside of Seattle, prosecutors have filed charges against her alleged trafficker for sexually exploiting her and three other women.

Maziar Rezakhani, a 36-year-old Lynnwood man, is facing felony sex trafficking charges in Snohomish County for allegedly targeting women on online dating platforms and filming them performing sex acts — including Hannah, who was only 16 at the time, InvestigateWest reported last year. Rezakhani has been summoned to appear in court for an initial hearing July 10.

Hannah, then a junior in high school, told police that she matched with a man who called himself “Max” on Tinder, one of the most popular dating apps in the world. He asked her to send photos of herself and later brought her to a hotel room with a camera and tripod set up inside. There, Hannah said he led her to a desk with several lines of white powder on it, and after she took the drugs, he had her and another young woman perform sex acts with him that he livestreamed online.

Three other women later went to police in 2022 with similar reports, according to a June 13 affidavit from the Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney summarizing the investigation. A man who went by “Max” or a similar name had contacted them through online dating platforms. Prosecutors say he met them at a Holiday Inn in Lynnwood and offered them drugs, then coerced them into performing sex acts that he livestreamed on the internet for money. He said he would pay them, but never did, according to the affidavit.

“The defendant deliberately targeted vulnerable victims — minors and sex workers — to exploit them for his financial gain, and he poses an ongoing threat to the community,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Julia Hartnell wrote in the court affidavit.

Snohomish County prosecutors charged Rezakhani with four counts of first-degree sex trafficking as well as second-degree theft and promoting prostitution for his alleged conduct related to the three adult victims. The allegations from Hannah resulted in additional charges, including one count of sexual exploitation of a minor and felony charges for giving a minor drugs and disseminating video of a minor performing sexual acts.

Rezakhani could not be immediately reached for comment. When InvestigateWest attempted to contact him at a number identified in the affidavit as Rezakhani’s, a man answered and then hung up when asked about the charges. His attorney also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier, Rezakhani was sentenced to five years in federal prison in 2017 for defrauding various financial institutions of more than $3 million. He was on probation for the federal crimes when police began investigating him for trafficking, according to the affidavit.

The case is a relatively rare example of criminal charges against a suspected trafficker who recruited victims online. As online recruitment and sexual exploitation of children rises across the nation, the criminal justice system is falling behind in its capacity to respond, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Cases are far more complex due to the advancements in technology,” said Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Jason Cummings. Cummings declined to comment on Rezakhani’s pending case. “It takes more work, more effort, to investigate those cases and bring those cases to the prosecutors for charging.”

But for Hannah, although she sees the charges as a small step forward, her experience as a victim within the justice system has left her feeling mostly alone, anxious and unsafe. She’s spent the past three years working on her mental health and trying to build her life back up, she said. Hannah dropped out of high school in fall 2022 following the exploitation and said she hopes to get back to school soon.

“I do feel some relief and validation that authorities are finally naming the harm,” Hannah said. “But I still feel a lot of frustration. I feel kind of powerless, like my safety is tied to decisions that I don’t control.”

‘Millions and millions’ of cases

In the summer of 2022, after Hannah described to a Lynnwood Police Department detective that she’d been trafficked, she began losing faith that her trafficker would ever be found. She knew him only by the name Max, which she didn’t believe was his real name. Police closed the case after they couldn’t identify a suspect, InvestigateWest reported.

But that September, when more women reported similar experiences, police began treating the incidents as linked, according to the affidavit.

The three adult victims, ages 23 to 30, reported that the man said he would pay them to perform sex acts on camera through Zelle, a digital payment service. After performing for the livestream, they each received a text message indicating the Zelle payment was sent, but the money never showed up in their bank accounts, the affidavit said.

The women also said he had assured them that the videos would not remain online once the livestream ended. Yet as of April 2025, some of the livestreamed videos were still available on the web, according to prosecutors.

An officer identified Rezakhani’s page on Recurbate, a website that records and archives adult webcam broadcasts, the affidavit said. Police searched Rezakhani’s phone and also found screenshots sent to Hannah, images of Rezakhani at the Holiday Inn in Lynnwood, images of the four alleged victims, dating applications and communications to others that indicated fraudulent Zelle transactions.

Prosecutors asked the court to set Rezakhani’s bail at $500,000, arguing his “actions while on Federal Probation indicate that he has no respect for the rule of law or the dignity of his fellow humans, but only cares for his ability to maintain a lavish lifestyle at the expense of others.”

Although dating sites and social media have become a top recruitment strategy for sex traffickers across the nation, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, local police departments like Lynnwood often lack the resources to investigate abusers who recruit kids online. Tech companies, meanwhile, have been slow to enact safety measures that prevent online child sexual exploitation.

A federal law passed last year called the REPORT Act aims to address these issues by expanding the types of crimes that certain online platforms are required to report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The bipartisan bill also extended the time that these online platforms must retain reported content, giving law enforcement more time to investigate.

Yet despite the additional mandatory reporting, the national center saw a 19% decrease in child sexual exploitation incidents reported to its CyberTipline last year.

“This decline is especially concerning because the REPORT Act, which was enacted in 2024, mandates companies to report two additional forms of child sexual exploitation for the first time — child sex trafficking and online enticement,” the center wrote in its 2024 CyberTipline report.

Even with the decline, however, the volume of reports remains significant. The center received 29.2 million incidents of child sexual exploitation to its tipline in 2024, down from 36.2 million in 2023. The vast majority of reports come from electronic service providers, which include online dating platforms, social media companies and websites with pornographic content like Chaturbate.

“Where are those penalties and accountabilities to them — the electronic service providers — for having millions and millions of reported cases of CSAM [child sexual abuse material] and exploitation happening on their software and platforms?” said Nathan LaChine, an advocate in Washington state who provides training about online safety and authored a book on the subject, Internet Safety Workbook for Tweens. “Basically, when you send something out to the internet, it’s out there forever.”

Hannah thinks that the criminal charges against her alleged trafficker might help her begin to move on. But as the case goes forward and her memories from that night resurface, she doesn’t expect to find closure through the criminal justice system.

“I’ve thought about that many times, but I’m really not sure what would give me closure,” Hannah said. “What happened is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

InvestigateWest originally published this article on June 30, 2025.