January 2017 Most Wanted paedophile fugitive jailed A paedophile who fled abroad after police discovered 34,000 indecent child photographs on his computers has been jailed for 30 months. Matthew Sammon, 46, spent two years on the run in Spain and became a Most Wanted fugitive before a Sky News tip-off led to his arrest and extradition. Back in the UK, he admitted downloading and possessing 34,587 indecent child pictures and 874 films, some of them shot secretly at swimming pools. Police suspected he had made the films himself as a first-aid instructor for a scuba diving club which trained at local pools, but they could not prove it. Sammon must serve half his sentence and will be free in around a year, as he served three months in custody after his extradition from Spain. During his sentencing at Southwark Crown Court, there was no mention of his flight from justice and later inclusion on the Most Wanted list of fugitives revealed by the National Crime Agency and Crimestoppers in Spain last October. Within hours of that appeal, expat Danny Reid contacted Sky News and took us to a car park along the coast where he pointed out Sammon – whom he had employed as a labourer. We alerted NCA officers and soon after two plain-clothes Spanish detectives slipped through the darkness and arrested the 46-year-old without a struggle. Sammon was originally arrested at his home in Croydon, south London, in 2014, but jumped bail while police examined his computers. He had three previous convictions and had stopped offending, but started again when he lost his job and home and suffered depression, his barrister Matthew Pardoe said. Sammon, who admitted seven charges of downloading and possessing indecent images, told police: “It had got worse and worse over time. It had become like a hoarding addiction.” Prosecutor Linda Shamel said Sammon had so many images he ran out of space on his computer and had to store them on CDs and memory sticks. He also downloaded software to enable him to share images with others. Mr Reid told Sky News his former employer’s 30-month sentence was “a joke”.