A paedophile who was caught after cybercrime investigators discovered he was using his home wifi to share sickening content online has been jailed.
Alan Moir, 43, was given a four-year term by judge Lady Haldane following a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh today.
Lady Haldane had earlier heard how Moir was brought to justice after the police received intelligence from staff at National Online Child Abuse Prevention (NOCAP) organisation.
The court had heard how NOCAP had discovered that an IP address had been sharing child abuse content.
Investigators discovered the IP address was linked to Moir’s home in St Cyrus.
The court heard that investigators found that the explicit content was being shared from an app called Dropbox registered to the email address of Moir.
This information led to the police obtaining a search warrant for Moir’s home.
Officers seized a mobile phone from Moir following a raid at his home on November 25 2023.
They also found a second handset which was found in the top drawer of a cabinet in the main bedroom of his property.
Thousands of indecent images
Upon examining the devices, officers found images of Moir sexually assaulting a young child.
Prosecutor William Frain-Bell KC told judge Lady Haldane that a total of 1,663 inaccessible still images of abuse were found on the handsets.
Speaking about the nature of the abuse, Mr Frain-Bell said the first set of images showed the child lying on a bed and several of these photographs had sexual comments written on them.
“Also discovered in the photo album cache were 1,109 files containing other indecent images of children,” he said.
“These images featured girls aged between one and 13-years-old engaging in sadistic sexual activity, penetrative sexual activity with adults, non-penetrative sexual activity with adults and sexualised posing.”
The story emerged after Moir pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of sexually assaulting a young child by penetration on two occasions between January 1 2018 and August 12 2019. He also admitted a charge of permitting to take or make indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children between May 1 2018 and November 15 2023.
Abuser’s silence
Mr Frain-Bell told Lady Haldane that police arrested Moir and took him into custody following the raid at the home.
He added: “The accused was interviewed. He gave a no comment interview.”
During the police probe, officers found that Moir had taken indecent photos of another child, who was thought to be aged between 15 to 17 at the time.
Mr Frain-Bell said there were over 80 indecent images taken of Moir’s first victim and over 150 indecent “pseudo-photographs” of his second victim.
The advocate depute added: “There were over 1,400 indecent images of other young girls aged between one and 13 years of age.”
The court heard that Moir was a first offender who had worked in the oil and gas industry prior to his arrest.
Sentence had been deferred at the end of this hearing which took place last month. Lady Haldane deferred sentence for the court to obtain reports.
On Tuesday the case called again for sentencing.
Significant harm caused to young child
Defence advocate Gillan Ross KC said that Moir was employed in the oil industry but has lost his job.
She said: “He is motivated to try and secure some form of employment upon his release from custody.
“He recognises that he may still have issues and that is something that he will address in custody. He will be accepting any offer of help given to him.”
Passing sentence, Lady Haldane told Moir that he needed to go to prison for his crimes.
She added: “You have pleaded guilty to two very serious offences – the first involving the sexual assault and sexual assault by penetration of a young child and the second of taking and making images of pseudo images of young children.”
The judge said it was clear that “significant harm” had been caused to the child victim.
Moir was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life.