Two men from the UK who posed as underage boys on Grindr have been found guilty of blackmail.
Nathanael Foster and Adam Webb from Gloucester in South West England were charged with two counts of blackmail and will both receive prison sentences.
They pretended to be 15-year-olds, which is one year under the age of consent in the UK, on the gay hookup app to lure in other men.
They then filmed their meetings to extort the other men for money, succeeding in getting £15,000 from one of their victims.
The prosecutor Janine Wood told the Gloucester Citizen:
“They set up a profile and were in contact with the first victim. He agreed to meet them and they put forward that they were going to inform others about his activities and what his interests were, and they suggested he paid them £10,000 to forget it.”
The first blackmail victim went to the police, and they discovered the other victim who had already handed over cash to the pair of blackmailers.
Woods said: “They even went back to his house with him and they asked him for £10,000. They thought he was messing them around and so then asked for £15,000. They stayed with him for the rest of the day and got the £15,000.”
Attorney Matthew Harbinson, who defended Foster, stated that the two wanted to catch men who were “not interested in gay sex, but underage sex.”