Teen extorted £90k from callers to fake sex hotline

A TEENAGER ran a fake sex hotline from his bedroom at his parents' home in the Capital and extorted almost £90,000 from ten men by threatening to play recordings of their calls to their families, friends and the police.

Kelz Sutherland, 19, took calls from men who had seen adverts in magazines.

Often putting on a voice, he would quickly lead the caller into talking about under-age sex before interrupting the call using a different voice pretending to be a call monitor.

He then warned callers that the discussions were illegal and recordings could be sent to police, Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told.

However he said they could be deleted from the 'system' for a fee, pocketing himself thousands of pounds.

Some of the blackmail victims were left in serious financial difficulty.

The biggest single amount extorted by Sutherland came from a 62-year-old caller.

Sutherland told him it would cost 34,000 to remove the recording from the system, otherwise it would be sent to the police, who would put him on the sex offenders' register.

The elaborate scam only came to light when one of the victims contacted police, who then set up a sting to track down Sutherland.

He pleaded guilty yesterday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to extorting 87,700 from 10 men aged between 32 and 65 years old between January 1 2008 and December 31 2009.

During the hearing, Sutherland began shouting from the dock and was warned he could face contempt of court charges unless he quietened down.

He said: "These men are all paedophiles, that's why I targeted them.

"All these men are trying to say they're victims but why's nothing being done to them?"

When police eventually raided Sutherland's home in Bath Street, Edinburgh, on January 23 this year they found the personal details of the callers including their dates of birth, phone numbers and even their friends and relatives' addresses.

None of the cash was recovered by police.

The court was told that every single caller had told police that the person on the other end of the line had initiated the discussions about under-age sex, although Sutherland protested this.

Defence agent Fiona Cooper said: "He doesn't accept that he was the one that led any of the callers into inappropriate conversations. He also doesn't accept that he was the only person involved."

Sheriff Deirdre MacNeill QC said: "I can see this gentleman has a troubled background and that will all be fully explored in a psychiatric report."

Sutherland was remanded in custody pending background reports and is due to be sentenced later this month.