Accused Snapchat groomer acquitted after falling victim to teenagers’ elaborate scam

A MAN scammed by two teenagers who tried to blackmail him into giving them money by accusing him of grooming one of them via Snapchat has been acquitted on all charges

Jasvir Singh was found not guilty of using a carriage service to procure the 13-year-old girl for sex. Picture: Facebook/Supplied

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A MAN scammed by two teenagers who tried to blackmail him into giving them money by accusing him of grooming one of them via Snapchat has been acquitted on all charges.

Jasvir Singh, 25, was found not guilty by a Supreme Court jury this week after being charged with two counts of using a carriage service to procure the 13-year-old girl for sex.

Prosecutor Mary Chalmers had said it was the Crown’s case that Singh contacted the girl via Snapchat and after she told him she was 13, he sent her a snap of his penis and asked for nudes.

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But his lawyer, Jon Tippett QC, said Singh had been the victim of an elaborate scam which saw him lured to a meeting with the girl and her brother on the pretence he would be meeting an adult.

“It was devious, it was intended to be misleading, it was misleading, it was cunning,” he said.

“It resulted in an innocent person arriving at a conclusion that ultimately led him to a meeting that was a product of a litany of false and created information.”

Mr Tippett said the girl sent his client “fake” images she’d downloaded from Instagram in a bid to trick him into giving her money.

“The children, of course, must have known what they were doing was wrong but perhaps they didn’t readily foresee the fact that this sort of behaviour can have such tragic consequences for other people,” he said.

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“Sometimes the cruelty of a lark is just not foreseen and the cruelty in this case was to mislead this man in the way that he was.”