Paedophile blackmailed victims into sex acts
A PAEDOPHILE blackmailed young internet victims into extreme and degrading sexual and physical acts, forcing one to lick toilet seats and eat dog food.
A Cambridge graduate, “highly manipulative” Matthew Falder made children, young men and women photograph themselves in compromising positions, sharing the material online with other paedophiles on the dark web. He targeted vulnerable people, including anorexic teenagers, posing on the internet as a depressed female artist offering them money for images.
Falder (30) contacted 300 people through their online advertisements on sites like Gumtree but if they agreed, “predatory, serial offender” Falder would blackmail them with a “constant stream” of increasingly depraved requests.
One young girl was forced to take naked video and pictures of herself holding signs with racist and homophobic slogans, messages to other paedophiles, and to lick a used tampon.
Ruona Iguyovwe, prosecuting, said he enticed his victims “to produce increasingly severe self-generated indecent images of themselves, the focus of these images being to humiliate and degrade the victims”.
Falder, of Edgbaston, Birmingham, was only snared after help from UK spy agency GCHQ and international co-operation from the FBI, and law enforcement in Israel, Slovenia, Australia and New Zealand.
He had previously admitted 137 charges against 48 victims, in offending stretching over eight years, until 2017.
Ms Iguyovwe said once the former Birmingham University geophysicist had compromising images, he offered a choice; either send him more material or he would send the images to friends and family. Three of his victims attempted suicide.
The three-day sentencing hearing continues.