Victim told ‘get naked now or your family dies’ -
Zachary Grant used a fake Facebook account to threaten and blackmail young women into sending him sexual images.
‘‘Get naked now or your family dies,’’ he told one victim.
‘‘Do you remember when your nudes went viral?’’ he asked another.
But with another account, under his own name, Grant would ‘‘curry favour’’, encouraging the women to comply with the anonymous demands and saying he’d help them.
When caught, the 26-year-old Waikato man tried to stop his victims talking to police, even offering one $50 not to give evidence.
He ended up pleading guilty to four charges of blackmail, one of intentional damage, and three of perverting the course of justice. And he was this month sentenced in the Hamilton District Court to three years and eight months in prison.
The offending involved three women Grant met through a former girlfriend – at least one while they were still at secondary school.
One of the women faced him in court, reading her victim impact statement and telling him he must be accountable for his actions.
‘‘He made out that he was a security blanket, someone that I could trust,’’ said the 18-year-old woman, who cannot be named.
‘‘Sadly I had to find out that this was not the truth.
‘‘Now I ask myself what if ... why is this person around me and are they genuine?’’
Grant’s offending was persistent, calculated and manipulative, Judge Robert Spear said. ‘‘You had set up one account to place pressure on [a woman] and the second account to try to