Blackmailer who posed as woman online jailed

Fife man used social media to entrap men and schoolboy then tried to extort cash over explicit images

A blackmailer who posed as an amorous young woman online to entrap men and a schoolboy has been jailed for four years and four months.

Joshua Hunter encouraged victims to take explicit pictures and videos and send them to him using a false female profile before extorting cash from some of the men under threat of publishing the material on social media or distributing it to family and friends.

Hunter, 23, formerly of Covenanters, Dunfermline, gained more than £1,700 from the calculating scheme and attempted to extort a further £4,000 from one man during a crime spree spanning more than two years.

He began by targeting a boy in 2015, beginning when the victim was 12, and pretended to be a female and induced the child to perform sex acts on himself and record them and send them to him. Hunter then went on to look for men as online targets.

When police seized phones, sim cards and a computer from his former home in Inverness they also recovered indecent images of children.

A judge told Hunter at the High Court in Edinburgh: “This was a callous course of conduct persisted in over a period of almost two years and clearly caused considerable distress and anxiety to a number of your victims.”

Lady Scott said the seriousness of the offending meant a custodial sentence was necessary. She jailed Hunter for two years for the extortion and attempted extortion offences and a further two years and four months for the crimes involving the boy.

She told Hunter that he would be placed on the sex offenders register for a 10-year period. The judge said she took into account that he was a first offender with no history of violence or sex crimes.

Hunter earlier admitted 13 charges when he appeared in court. He pled guilty to nine charges of extortion, two offences of causing an underage child to participate in sexual activity and possessing and making indecent images of children. The offences were committed in Inverness-shire, Inverness, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Lanarkshire between January 1 2015 and May 1 2017.

Advocate depute Stewart Ronnie told the court Hunter’s criminal conduct had a profound effect on one victim.

The man was “terrified” that material he had sent would be revealed to his family. The prosecutor said: “He contemplated taking his own life.”

Another victim handed over £500 fearing that images of him in a nude state would be sent to his employers.

Hunter, a hairdresser, posed on social media sites as a woman before exchanging messages and videos with victims who were encouraged to perform sex acts and share footage with him. Defence solicitor advocate Ewen Roy said Hunter had taken the view that a custodial sentence was “inevitable”.

“This was a callous course of conduct persisted in over a period of almost two years and clearly caused distress and anxiety to a number of your victims. JUDGE LADY SCOTT