Paedophile hunters posing as a 13-year-old girl snared a man who went on to send her explicit videos and invite her to an orgy.
Raymond Boyne, 64, asked the decoy whether her mum was home and encouraged her to delete her messages.
But the communications had all been logged by a voluntary child protection group, which live-streamed a confrontation with Boyne on his Elgin doorstep over social media before passing their evidence to the police.
Boyne appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to plead guilty to a charge of attempting to cause an older child to look at a sexual image and attempting to communicate indecently with an older child.
The moment paedophile was confronted on his doorstep
Fiscal depute Alison Young told the court that the case had come about following a joint operation by non-police affiliated voluntary child protection groups using a decoy profile on social media.
She explained: “Group members create decoy social media profiles of children aged between 10 and 15 years of age. They leave them dormant until contacted.”
She said that in January of this year, one of the profiles, which had a profile picture of a “clearly teenage girl” received a friend request from Boyne, who began to send messages.
Decoy told man she was ‘only 13’
The decoy told Boyne, whose profile information said he worked for North Star Shipping and had attended Buckie High School, that she was only 13.
He replied that he was 62 but “looked young”.
He advised the girl that he was attending an orgy and subsequently sent her a message saying: “You want to go to the next one? What will your mum say?”
He told the ‘girl’ that if she did attend: “You would have to use you hand on someone” to which he received the reply: “That sounds scary.”
Boyne repeatedly questioned the decoy about her knowledge of a certain sexual act, describing it as “what I do to myself when I am on my own.”
‘Is your mum in?’
One message he sent read: “Is your mum in? I can’t do it if your mum is there unless you are in a private place.”
In another, he wrote: “When you are on your own I will show you how a man does it if you want to see it.”
At one point Boyne asked the decoy: “Did you delete your messages?”
In total Boyne sent the decoy account three explicit videos.
The child protection volunteers downloaded all the conversations, before confronting Boyne on the doorstep of his home in Forteath Street, Elgin.
“Group members attended at his home address, the accused answered the door,” Mrs Young told the court.
Man ‘guilty’ and ‘ashamed’
She said that when questioned about his actions he said he was “guilty” and “ashamed of himself”. He added, “I should have deleted it straight away.”
Following the doorstep confrontation, a record of the decoy operation was passed to police and Boyne was subsequently arrested and charged.
He told officers: “Guilty, might as well plead guilty because I can’t deny it.”
His home was searched and devices seized but no further relevant material was recovered.
Solicitor Robert Cruickshank made no representations to the court in mitigation for his client and Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood deferred sentence until next month for the production of reports.
Sheriff Fleetwood placed Boyne on the sex offenders’ register with immediate effect, the eventual length of registration to be determined at sentencing.
He allowed him to remain on bail until the case called again but told him: “All possible disposals are open to the court.”