Man who posed as teenager jailed over pictures sent to Derbyshire girl
He'd been pretending to be a 14-year-old schoolboy
Anthony Lonsdale, of Uxendon Crescent in Wembley, London, was arrested in March 2022 and had also been attempting to enrol at a school in the Ilkeston area.
The 21-year-old, who was 20 at the time, had turned up dressed in a school uniform, having attempted to meet up with a teenage girl he had been messaging on social media there.
Lonsdale had set up fake profiles on a number of different social platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp, first in the name of a teenage girl called ‘Tia’.
Posing as ‘Tia’, he chatted to the girl and encouraged her to add her so called 12-year-old brother ‘Sam’- a second profile he had created.
Over several weeks ‘Sam’ had messaged the girl, starting off friendly but leading to her feeling like they were boyfriend and girlfriend- and sending her sexually explicit photos.
Following further investigation officers were able to identify two other girls from the Nottinghamshire area who Lonsdale had been contacting under different false names, including ‘Tony’, ‘Tia’, ‘Emily’ and ‘Sam’.
Lonsdale would message from the different accounts, send indecent images, and request photos in return.
He met up with one of the young teenage girls at McDonalds disguised as a female friend, and tried to contact her younger sister.
More offences were found while Lonsdale was on bail, with phone analysis showing multiple conversations with teenage girls and nude photos.
Lonsdale pleaded guilty to eight counts of grooming and possession of sexually explicit images of children.
He was jailed for seven years, plus three years on extended licence, following a hearing at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday 19 January.
A Sexual Harm Prevention Order and five-year restraining order were also put in place to prevent Lonsdale from contacting the victims.