Locations
Glanafon, Betws, Carmarthenshire, SA18
Description
A SEX offender breached a court order again by deleting an app from his phone after telling police he was being blackmailed by two men claiming they ‘worked for Fox News and the FBI’.
The court heard that Shaun Smith was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order in December 2018 after admitting attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming and attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.
This order barred him from deleting apps or internet history from his devices.
On September 1, Smith contacted 101 reporting that he was being blackmailed.
Officers attended the defendant’s address on Glanafon in Betws on September 9. He told the officers that he had been contacted on an online messaging application by a woman making demands for money.
He said he was then contacted by two men who claimed they worked for Fox News and the FBI making further demands for money.
When the officers asked Smith to show them the demands, he told them he had deleted them as he had been told to when he called 101. Upon reviewing the 101, the officers found this wasn’t true.
Smith was arrested for deleting the communications app – which put him in breach of his sexual harm prevention order for the fourth time.
“He deliberately deleted the app,” prosecutor Ms Wilson said, adding that Smith’s previous breach of the order relating to him deleting the Telegram app.
On that occasion, Smith told police he had been “talking to a woman” on Telegram and via a third-party explicit website, but then deleted the app and its history because “someone was trying to scam me”.
The court heard that 58-year-old Smith had eight previous convictions for 12 offences.
“The only real mitigation is that Mr Smith had the good sense to plead guilty,” said David Singh, in mitigation.
“He did the right thing initially by reporting it to the police.
“It would suggest this is not necessarily someone trying to cover up his tracks, but it is a person with a degree of naivety.”
Addressing the defendant, Judge Geraint Walters said: “This is altogether becoming tiresome now. You pay scant regard to the terms of the sexual harm prevention order.
“What sort of site you were on, I can’t begin to imagine, which led you to call the police saying you were being blackmailed by people working for Fox News and the FBI.
“You are a devious individual, it seems to me, hell bent on non-compliance.”
Smith was sentenced to 10 months in prison.