An online extortionist who posed as a fake modelling agent to con a vulnerable 15-year-old girl into sending him a string of naked selfies was yesterday jailed.
Andrew O’Neill, 21, then sent a topless photo of the girl to two of her friends when she became suspicious and refused to send him any more photos.
He then tried to extort more images from her by threatening to send the pictures to her friends and family if she didn’t supply him with more indecent photos.
The abuse only came to light when the girl’s mother was involved – who called in police. They raided his home in the Baxter Park area and found evidence of the scam – as well as a massive haul of child abuse images he had amassed on a laptop, tablet and mobile phone including a picture of a child being raped.
O’Neill, pictured, was jailed for four years and placed on the sex offenders register for life at Dundee Sheriff Court after he admitted charges of attempted extortion and making indecent images of children.
He was told by a sheriff that one of those he was found with “might be described as an image of an atrocity”.
Fiscal depute Nicola Gillespie told the court that O’Neill’s victim – who has high-functioning autism – had been contacted by O’Neill on Facebook. He was using the pseudonym “Jennifer Watts”, with a profile picture showing a young, brown haired woman in her early 20s and a profile cover photo describing “her” as a “modelling agent”.
O’Neill, of Baxter Park Glebe, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted extortion committed between July 1 2016 and September 14 2016 and taking or making indecent images of children between July 11 2016 and July 31 2017.
Sheriff Alastair Brown told him: “You constructed a deliberate deception in which you ensnared a vulnerable child. You exploited that successful deception to obtain photos of her partially undressed and ultimately obtaining naked photos.”
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.