A Perth dentist who drugged the drinks of several women he met online and then raped them has been found guilty of 24 charges.
Farzem Mehrabi, 34, met the women, aged between 18 and 24, on Tinder and Bumble and invited them to bars in the Western Australian capital over a two-month period in 2022.
CCTV footage shown in court during his month-long jury trial showed Mehrabi at one of these meetings as he mixed a substance in his date’s glass while she was in the bathroom.
Prosecutors say the then-third-year medical student at the University of Notre Dame spiked the drinks with a cocktail of drugs that included MDMA, MDA, lorazepam and methamphetamine.
Mehrabi, who was born in Iran and moved to Australia as a child, also raised the issue of drug use, boasting to some of the women that he had bought high-quality chemicals in Switzerland.
He then drove the drunken women to his parents’ home in Shelly, south of Perth, before having non-consensual sex with them, it was reported. 7 News.
Mehrabi testified that the drug use and sex were consensual, but the jury found him to be an unreliable witness with a history of telling lies, including about his age, height and whether he lived with his parents on dating apps.
One woman told the court that after just four drinks she woke up in Mehrabi’s bed the next day with no memory of the night, scratched up and feeling sick, and that she then phoned him to ask if he had “given her something”.
CCTV footage played to the court showed Farzem Mehrabi mixing a substance into a woman’s drink while she was in the bathroom.
The 34-year-old was found guilty on 24 charges and will be sentenced in December.
Seven women filed complaints against Mehrabi and he was found guilty of sexual assault charges against five of them, along with other drug charges and one count of impeding a person’s breathing by applying pressure to the neck.
He was acquitted of a charge of possession of drugs or alcohol.
Mehrabi was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on December 17.