Goalkeeper jailed for blackmail

1:36pm Friday 5th September 2008

A goalkeeper who blackmailed a top Premier League footballer over a sex video has been jailed for 20 months.

Ex-Manchester City trainee Ashley Timms, 22, demanded £15,000 from the star, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Timms, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, made a series of threats to publish the images if he was not paid the cash.

The sex video clip involved a woman and the footballer engaged in sex at his home.

Timms pleaded guilty last month and was jailed at Manchester Crown Court after admitting making a series of unwarranted demands with menaces.

Passing sentence, Judge Andrew Gilbart said: "Blackmail always calls for a custodial sentence. The abuse of your friendship for simple greed is an aggravating feature.

"This was a calculated attempt to extract money for your own benefit.

"It is depressing that in a society where there is supposed to be more sexual freedom, some popular newspapers and magazines continue to dress their interest in it as some form of moral indignation when what they are actually doing is making money from their readers' interest in sex and salacious gossip."

Timms and the player, known only as witness A, had become friends over time and were part of a "fantasy world" of fast cars, money and girls. Such videoing of footballers involved in sex with girls had become "commonplace" the court heard.

David Friesner, prosecuting, told the court Timms used a mobile phone to video the international footballer having sex with a 19-year-old woman at the player's home last September. But they drifted apart as Timms' football career "withered" because of his poor attitude.

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