A Nairn man has been jailed for using threats to make schoolgirls send him naked pictures of themselves through social media.
Craig McNeill carried out a campaign against a total of 11 girls aged between 12 and 16 between February, 2018 and November, 2019.
At Inverness Sheriff Court last month, he admitted 12 charges against him.
Jailing him for 27 months yesterday, Sheriff Margaret Neilson told McNeill: “Such is the sheer scale and nature of these offences, only a custodial sentence is appropriate.”
He was also placed on the Sex Offender’s Register for 10 years.
Defence solicitor Duncan Henderson told the court that he accepted a custodial sentence was likely.
He added: “This is a very worrying trend of offences. He was on a treadmill at the time of returning from work and spending time on his own on the internet.
“It is sad that a young man of his age hasn’t more to occupy his time.”
McNeill had admitted three charges of extortion, one of attempted extortion, one of distributing indecent images and seven of obtaining sexual gratification from sending indecent communications. Sentence had been deferred for a background report.
At a previous court hearing, fiscal depute Robert Weir said McNeill of Loch Avenue, at first used his own name, but then pretended to be a number of other men using false names.
He threatened to kill the mother of one of the girls if she did not send him intimate photographs of herself.
She sent him two fully clothed images and then blocked him, Mr Weir said.
Other girls he communicated with either blocked McNeill on Snapchat after he sent indecent photographs or videos to him and one reported him to the social media outlet. But he had used a false name.
Two girls complied with his requests after fearing his threats to either distribute previous images or harm their family.
A number of girls also either told their parents or their teacher, Mr Weir went on.
“Following complaints made to the police, investigations showed that all the user names were registered to McNeill at his home address.
“A search warrant was obtained, his mobile phone was seized and analysis showed it had been used to create some of the user names, it had been used to converse with some of the girls requesting they send images to him.” Mr Weir concluded.
