Dudley man, 36, posed as schoolboy to lure children
A man who posed as a schoolboy on social messaging sites to chat up young girls and persuade them to send him indecent photographs has been jailed for 18 months.
Lee Heathcock, aged 36, exchanged BlackBerry Messenger posts with children as young as 11, talked about his school, used an image of a teenage boy as his profile picture, and adopted text speak acronyms to convince victims they were in touch with a child.
Heathcock, who police say is a prolific Dudley criminal, admitted 11 charges, including inciting children to engage in sexual activity and pornography and possessing indecent images. He asked for six more offences to be taken into consideration.
Wolverhampton Crown Court heard officers from West Midlands Police's Public Protection Unit had painstakingly searched more than 20,000 messages on his phone and uncovered more than 400 conversations with different children.
Once Heathcock felt he had struck up a relationship, his conversations with the children became sexual and sent indecent images and he encouraged the children to do the same.
Police found evidence of him exchanging sexually explicit images and chat with several youngsters from across the UK and overseas. Five of these girls were aged 12 and one was just 11.
Heathcock was jailed for 18 months, placed on the Sex Offender's Register for 10 years and banned from working with children.
The investigation began when Heathcock, a convicted burglar of no fixed address, was arrested by an off-duty police officer at a petrol station. He had been wanted for recall to prison since October 2011.
When police searched his car, they found two mobile phones which had "concerning message exchanges" between July and September of that year as well as sexually explicit photos of children. He initially claimed the phones belonged to someone else but police found the person he named was actually dead.
Detective Sergeant Emily Crump said: "It was a very detailed case. Our team analysed Heathcock's phone and used BlackBerry PINs to trace victims across the country.
"He duped children into believing they were communicating with a child of a similar age. He displayed a profile picture of a teenage boy and used age-appropriate language to support his deception."
She also issued a warning to parents to watch their children's internet and phone use.
