A female police officer who pretended to be part of a vigilante paedophile-hunting group to extort money from a suspect has been sentenced to 40 months in prison.
PC Marie Thompson, who served with West Yorkshire Police, was found guilty of blackmail and perverting the course of justice after she tried to pressure a man she had previously arrested into paying her £3,500 to keep his alleged offences secret.
The court heard that Thompson arrested the man in October 2022 on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. He was later released under investigation. Not long after, he received an email demanding payment into a bank account, signed off as being from “Paedophile Hunters.” The message claimed that paying the amount would “ensure that information remains between you and us.”
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.”
Later that same day, the man’s partner received a follow-up text message warning that a reply was needed by the end of the day. Instead of paying, the couple reported the matter to police, but the complaint ended up back in Thompson’s hands.
To cover her tracks, Thompson falsely recorded that the victim did not wish to pursue the complaint, and later told him the senders of the blackmail messages could not be traced. She even sent a second email, posing as someone else, to make the story appear credible. In that message, she wrote: “I’m so sorry. I came to drop something off for my mum and overheard you talking. I never told a soul and never intended to.”
Her deception began to unravel in March 2023, when she left her department and another officer took over her caseload. During a routine follow-up, the new officer learned about the unresolved blackmail emails. When he checked the phone number used to send the text message, he discovered it was linked to Thompson’s personal contact details from her police vetting form.
Thompson was arrested and eventually admitted to both blackmail and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
In a victim impact statement read at Leeds Crown Court, the man, who was later given a suspended sentence for the indecent image offences, described feeling “angry and betrayed.”
He said: “She was trusted in her role as a police officer in a department that comes into contact with probably the most vulnerable persons in society. For her to know the position I was in and use it against me is unbelievable.”
The judge condemned Thompson’s actions as a gross abuse of authority and public trust, highlighting the harm caused both to the victim and to the reputation of the police.
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