A married woman told a jury she had been quizzed by the FBI after being targeted by a sex plot blackmailer from Broughty Ferry.
The 23-year-old – giving evidence at Dundee Sheriff Court from the District Attorney’s office in Virginia, USA – said Matthew Watt had tracked her down online.
She said she had known Watt from when she lived in Scotland and was “freaked out” by him demanding explicit photographs from her.
The woman, who cannot be identified, said Watt had used a false female name to be accepted as a friend on her SnapChat account.
She said he quickly began asking her for sex pictures and used various other accounts with threatening names like “No Games” and “I’m Serious” to try to blackmail her.
Watt, 23, of Rowanbank Gardens, denies trying to blackmail the mother-of-three by threatening to share explicit sexual images of her online.
Threats begin
She told the court Watt “eventually” revealed it was him.
“He wanted me to send him dirty pictures.
“He asked for pictures of my butt.
“He wanted from my neck down to my stomach, boob pics.
“He wasn’t very happy at all that I had said ‘no’ and that’s when he started to get a little persistent.
“He just kept asking me. He started to threaten me.
“At first it was that he was going to tell my husband I was sending pictures, when I was not.
“He said he had nudes of me but I knew he didn’t.
“He said he was going to photoshop my face onto naked bodies and post them all over the internet and to my family, and all over Facebook and Instagram.”
Couple start gathering evidence
She said: “At first I was very scared. I freaked out.
“He kept saying very inappropriate things to me.
“I blocked him after a while.
“I got my husband involved and told him what had happened.”
The couple allowed Watt to get in touch again so they could photograph further evidence of his blackmail attempts, she said.
The jury was told Watt sent vile messages and issued a countdown to the moment he would post fake nudes of her.
She told the jury: “That sounded like he was going to post these pictures of me and he was going to send a link to say he had done it.
“I got from that that he was blackmailing me or threatening me.”
She told the court the FBI interviewed her in December 2020 as they investigated Watt’s online activities.
Demanded selfies, trans witness claims
Another witness, who has transitioned from female to male, told the court Watt threatened “blackmail” for refusal to send graphic selfies.
The witness told the jury Watt claimed he was working on a photographic project called “The Illusion Project.”
When he was told by police he was being charged with sexual extortion offences, Watt replied: “She said she had done something similar with something before.
“I thought she was consensual.
“She said she was going to sell images to make money. I asked if she wanted it to be her bum.”
The witness had denied ever selling photos of feet online.
The charges
Watt denies targeting three women between September 1 2019 and April 13 2020, including “coercing [a named person] into posing for sexually explicit photographs and videos”.
He denies forcing the complainer to send him sex videos and sending sexual messages online.
He denies causing “fear or alarm” by intimating he would send sexually graphic videos of the person to her family if explicit material did not continue to be sent.
Watt denies obtaining further images by extortion.
He denies attempting to extort images from another woman – then aged 18 – by saying he would “doctor” intimate photos and share them online.
Watt denies forcing this complainer to look at sexual images and offering money in exchange for intimate photographs.
He denies targeting the woman in Alexandria, Virginia, in the United States with the intention of “menacing her.”
He denies trying to extort sexual images from her by threatening to doctor other images and share them online, as well as sending her numerous sexual messages.
The trial, before Sheriff Alistair Carmichael, continues.
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