UK- Officer Amerdeep Johal 'used police files to find blackmail targets'

12-8-2008 United Kingdom:

A corrupt police officer planned to make more than £2 million by using confidential details to blackmail registered sex offenders and sell information to wealthy criminals, a court heard today.

Using intelligence from a police internal computer system Amerdeep Johal, 29, wrote letters to ten convicted sex offenders and one suspected offender, demanding that they pay him up to £31,000 or he would expose them to their families, neighbours and employers, the Old Bailey was told.

Mr Johal, using confidential information about a drugs operation, also posed as a Customs officer offering to sell £600,000 of seized cocaine, the court heard. On his arrest letters found on his laptop showed he wanted £732,000 in £50 notes from another target and had other letters prepared asking for up to £600,000, a jury heard.

Mr Johal was working as a constable at West End Central police station in July last year, using the Crimint system to get informaton for frontline officers, but he abused his positon to use the Metropolitan Police computer to compile a list of targets that he could extort money from, it was said.

He allegedly told one planned victim that he wanted enough money to leave London, pay off his mortgage and never work again.

He demanded either £29,000 or £31,000 from the sex offenders but asked for £89,000 from a suspected fraudster whom he knew from the computer had had £40,000 found in his home, the jury heard.

He asked his targets to reply by the end of the montha and left a mobile number, the telephone for which was found on him when he was arrested, the court was told. David Markham, prosecuting, said that it was a telephone "dedicated to the business of making money".

All of the registered sex offenders and the alleged fraudster lived near him in Redbridge, Essex, the jury heard.

He sent each of them an anonymous letter saying that he wanted the money in cash. In one he wrote: "I am sure that these recent pictures of you outside your home and details I have given are of interest to you and that you would not wish for them to be openly known by neighbours and the community around you let alone employers and people you deal with on a day to day basis.

"What about your families and how they will be associated and deal with this. How will people treat them? Who knows how the locals will react."

For "a reasonable sum" the court heard, he said he would hand over the photographs, memory stick and the file that had been "compiled".

Mr Johal, formerly an executive on the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association, denies 12 counts of blackmail and one of misconduct in a public office.

He claimed that he believed he or his family would be hurt after a criminal got in touch with him and forced him to use the computer system to make money.

Mr Markham, added: "This case is about the gross abuse of public office by a corrupt and dishonest serving police officer for financial gain and its the Crown's case that he breached the position of trust not only in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service but also in relation to the public who he was obliged to serve."

He said that Mr Johal used the Crimint system improperly.

"This defendant used and accessed that system to identify registered sex offenders for the purpose of blackmailing those individuals by threatening to disclose details of each individual's criminal history to neighbours, employers and others in the community unless a sum of cash was paid.

"The Crown will also say the defendant misused the Crimint system to identify other types of offender, not sexual offenders, and either demand money in the same manner or offer them assistance in the commission or concealment of crime in return for money."

The defendant targeted two types of offender, he said. "Of all the offenders vulnerable to blackmail because of the nature of the offending involved there is no better category than a registered sex offender." He said the second category involved individuals he had targeted through the Crimint system who appeared to have money.

Mr Johal was arresed after some of the recipients of the letters went to the police and he was the subject of an undercover operation. He sent one text to an undercover officer, while he was shopping with his family, agreeing to accept £5,000 and when he returned home officers from the anti-corruption command were waiting.

He told them: "I have been stupid," the court heard.

The trial continues. ..News Source.. by Adam Fresco, Crime Correspondent