Corby catfish hijacked social media accounts to encourage women to send him naked photos
A man who stole social media accounts from young women has been banned from going within 100 metres of six victims.
Ciaran Thomas Jamison was before Northampton Crown Court where he admitted eight counts linked to hijacking women’s social media accounts which he used to persuade others to send him photos.
The 32-year-old was charged with three fraud and five computer misuse offences connected with the ruse, that he carried out between May 2018 and September 2020.
Jamison, of Beanfield Avenue, pleaded guilty to all the offences and was before Northampton Crown Court earlier this week for sentence.
The court heard that Jamison had adopted the identities women on social media and used their accounts to send messages to other women. He told them they could receive payment for sharing ‘naughty’ photos of themselves.
In one case he invented a female social media account to send messages to one victim saying that she could receive money if she shared naked photos, but in order to so, she had to share her email address and password in order to add a payment app to her phone. Once he had the details he was able to gain unauthorised access to her Snapchat account and changed the password.
He then sent messages from that account to another woman, asking for her Snapchat login details.
In another case, he was able to gain access to a woman’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, changed the passwords, associated the accounts with a different email address so the passwords could not be changed back, and then sent messages to others from those accounts.
He also managed to get into another victim’s account and, using her details and pictures, set up a cloned Snapchat profile, from which he sent messages to other women.
Jamison was given two years in prison, suspended for 15 months.
He was also ordered to complete six months of mental health treatment, 20 rehabilitation activity days and 180 hours of unpaid work. He will also have to pay a £187 victim surcharge.
The judge also made restraining orders banning Jamison from going within 100 metres of any of the six victims for the next three years.