June 2019 Paedophile paid nearly £500 for indecent images A paedophile who paid hundreds of pounds to people in foreign countries for indecent images of children has been jailed for nearly three years. Alan Bloy, 53, came to the attention of the force’s paedophile online investigation team (POLIT) after they received intelligence suggesting his IP address had been used to access indecent images online. On 1 November, 2017, Bloy had the room he was renting at a house in Pittneys, Peterborough, raided by police and several devices seized, except for his mobile phone which he voluntarily handed over later that day. Post-it notes with examples of explicit internet searches were also found in his room. Officers forensically examined his devices and found 32 indecent images, nine of which were classed as category A, the most severe, as well as internet searches for explicit content dating back to June that year. Bloy’s phone was also found to contain conversations with children as young as 11 and messages detailing his sexual fantasies. Further investigations revealed that over the course of 12 months, from October 2016, he had sent a total of £490 to people in Ghana and the Philippines in exchange for indecent images of children. In police interview he admitted to possessing illegal images and sending inappropriate images of himself to people he believed to be children. He was subsequently released under investigation. Then, in May last year, police in Wales received a report from an online child abuse activist group (OCAG), which had been speaking with Bloy for four months using a decoy account purporting to be a 12-year-old girl. Officers were sent just under 700 screenshots of messages, which included indecent images Bloy had sent the ‘girl’ and conversations where he tried to teach ‘her’ about puberty and sex. He had also spent time researching Cardiff, after suggesting the pair should meet there. He was interviewed for a second time and again admitted to his offending. At Peterborough Crown Court, Bloy was sentenced to two years and ten months in jail after pleading guilty to three counts of making indecent images of a child, intentionally encouraging the commission of an either way offence, and two counts of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity. He was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely and handed a ten-year sexual harm prevention order, which will allow police to monitor his activity online after he has served his prison sentence.