Blackmailer given three years over threats to autistic woman

Mark Couser was arrested in Yorkshire after texts making demands to the woman and her mother were traced back to him.

He had used another name when he befriended his victim in a chat room, Fastflirt, which she entered using her mobile phone.

Stephen Grattage, prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court yesterday the 32-year-old who lived in Scotland had been diagnosed as suffering from cerebral palsy at birth and had the help of a housing support officer because of her autism.

She was described as vulnerable because she was easily taken advantage of and had few friends.

After they exchanged messages about child sexual abuse he asked her to send him another mobile phone and she did so.

But she then began receiving abusive texts demanding money and mobile phones credit. The blackmailer threatened to expose her interest and when she contacted Couser he claimed the mobile phone she had sent had not arrived and that he, too, was receiving threatening messages.

The woman's mother, realising her daughter was missing a mobile phone, sent a message to the number saying her daughter was disabled and needed her phone. Shortly after that she, too, received abusive text messages and demands for money.

The blackmailer claimed "Your daughter is a sick pervert" and

threatened to go to the police. He also said: "Your daughter is playing games with me, I'm sure you don't want the police involved so pay me."

Police executed a search warrant at Couser's home in Broadway, Lupset, Wakefield, in March 2007 and recovered his phone and the one sent by his victim.

The court was told Couser, 41, who admitted blackmail, had a previous conviction for obtaining by deception in 2003 involving him conning a woman out of 12,500 after befriending her on the internet.

He then began asking her to help him with money. Later he claimed he had been arrested by police and held on remand in Hull prison, only to then pretend he had escaped and was on the run in France heading for Spain and again asking for money.

Jailing him Judge Kerry Macgill said: "You have a talent for locating people on the internet and quite frankly taking gross advantage of them."

In the previous conviction he had spun the woman "yarns" and because she thought she was in love with him she had parted with cash while the more recent case involved "mean and nasty offences."

Matthew Harding for Couser said that at the time of the offences in February, 2007 he was then morbidly obese, virtually housebound and an isolated individual. Since then he had lost weight and was back in the community.