A police officer who posed as a ‘paedophile hunter’ to blackmail an arrested suspect in order to pay off gambling debts, has been jailed for more than three years
A police officer who pretended to be a ‘paedophile hunter’ in order to blackmail a suspect has been jailed for more than three years.
PC Marie Thompson, 29, posed as an online ‘paedophile hunter’ and asked for £3,500 from a suspect who she herself had arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.
She used a fake email address to contact the man before later saying that she had been unable to find who was behind it after he reported the approach to the police.
Thompson was the officer in charge of a South Yorkshire Police investigation into the man who was arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children before being released under investigation, pending further examination of his digital devices, Leeds Crown Court heard.
The email, sent from a ProtonMail address, demanded that the man make the £3,500 payment so that knowledge of his alleged crimes remained secret.
The email read: “Information has been passed to us that you have been arrested for media involving children. As an organisation which works to protect children from people such as yourself we therefore ask you to make a donation to us.”
The man’s partner was even contacted and asked to make the payment by the end of the day. The court heard how the couple refused to do this and instead filed a police report.
Thompson told the man she would look into the matter but falsely recorded on the crime report that he did not wish to pursue a complaint.
The court heard she also told “a number of lies” in her pocket notebook, including altering the phone number used to text the man’s partner to hide that it was her personal number.
In what the court heard was a “further attempt to cover her tracks”, Thompson sent a second email with the subject “I’m so sorry”, which said: “I came to drop something off for my mum and overheard you talking. I never told a soul and never intended to.”
Six weeks after the case was closed, Thompson directly lied to the man telling him that the sender of the email and text message could not be traced.
It was only when Thompson was taken off the case that her crimes became known. The officer who took over the investigation into the indecent image allegations was told that Thompson had been unable to trace the sender of the blackmail.
However, when he saw the phone number that had been used to text the man’s partner, he found that it was the same one Thompson had used on her police vetting form.
In a victim impact statement, the man, who was later given a suspended prison sentence for the indecent image charges, said he was “extremely angry” towards Thompson for using his situation against him.
In mitigation the court heard Thompson suffers from a severe gambling disorder and was in considerable debt at the time.
Following a guilty plea, Thompson was given a Regulation 13 notice, issued to probationers deemed unfit to serve as a police officer. She resigned from the force on October 16, 2025.
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