ΟΙ ΚΙΝΔΥΝΟΙ ΤΩΝ ΔΙΑΔΙΚΤΥΑΚΩΝ ΕΦΑΡΜΟΓΩΝ - 1

A man has been jailed for two and a half years after he used Grindr to blackmail men who were not out.

Liam Hull, 22, targeted many men who were married with children, demanding cash with the threat of exposing them.

One victim paid him over £1,000 while another was forced to confess to his wife of 20 years. A third had a stroke because of the worry and stress.

Hull, from Luton, Bedfordshire, admitted three counts of blackmail at Luton Crown Court yesterday.

It is believed he may have had many other victims who have not come forward over fears of being outed.

Luton Crown Court heard he swapped explicit pictures with his victims and use their phone numbers to track them down on social media.

He would use the information to threaten them.

After getting £1,000 from one victim he told him: ‘Thanks, just be careful who you speak to next time.’

Prosecutor Max Hardy said that one man had been married to a woman for five years but had been using Grindr to meet other men for sex.

Bedfordshire Police arrested Hull in May after some of his victims came forward.

Defending, Mr David Healey told the court Hull had been diagnosed in his youth with ADHD and dyslexia and had spent some time in his teens in care.

It emerged that Hull had been convicted of an offence in July 2015 of making a false representation after contacting a man he had met through the Grindr site and asking for £200 from him to meet, but then failed to turn up.

In 2014 he had accepted a police caution for pursuing a course of conduct which amounted to harrassment by threatening to put pictures on Facebook of a man who had been in contact with him regarding sexual matters. (metro.co.uk, 25-8-2016)