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Gay couple jailed for blackmailing married man on Grindr
A gay couple have been given jail terms after they blackmailed and threatened to expose a married man they met on a gay hookup app.
Daniel Edwards, 29, and Kristofer Wagner, 30, was jailed for two years and 10 months, and one year and eight months respectively.
They admitted blackmailing the man whom they met on Grindr.
Swindon Crown Court heard Edwards exchanged explicit pictures and messages with the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and then asked if he was married.
When the victim said he was married to a woman, Edwards demanded £2,000 or he would forward the messages and pictures to his wife.
The man agreed to pay £1,500 and arranged to meet Edwards who was accompanied by Wagner in a car.
The victim called police soon after.
Following the sentence, Kate Lewis, senior crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service in Wessex, said the case shows that ‘homophobia can exist even in a situation where it is least expected.’
‘The defendants understood the sensitivity of the victim’s situation and cruelly used this against him,’ she was quoted by the BBC as saying.
‘There is no doubt that Daniel Edwards specifically targeted his victim, first by going on a gay dating website and secondly by determining whether the victim was married in order to blackmail him.
‘The CPS according to its policy treated the case as a homophobic hate crime because Daniel Edwards threatened to ‘out’ the victim if he refused to pay the sum of money demanded.
‘He knew the harm it would cause to the victim and his family.
‘We considered the case as a homophobic hate crime because of the perception that the defendants were motivated by hostility towards the victim because of his sexuality.’
The post Gay couple jailed for blackmailing married man on Grindr appeared first on Gay Star News.
Sylvia Tan
www.gaystarnews.com/article/gay-couple-jailed-for-blackmailing-married-man-on-grindr/
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