A Hull entertainer who unwittingly chatted up a police officer posing as a 12-year-old girl on the Internet has been jailed.
Club singer Nicky John McCullough from Orchard Park, north Hull, was caught in a police sting operation.
He had logged onto an Internet chat room and thought he was contacting a 12-year-old girl.
McCullough tried to incite the girl – actually an undercover male officer from the Metropolitan Police – to watch him on a webcam carrying out an indecent act in July 2007.
He also attempted to persuade the fictitious girl to do the same on two separate occasions.
Then the 29-year-old asked her to give him her picture, phone number and to meet him.
McCullough, of Highcourt, had been targeting young girls in a children’s chat room between July and October 2007.
But as a result of the online police sting operation, officers in East Yorkshire were told and he was arrested.
Judge John Swanson, sitting at Hull Crown Court, told McCullough that a message needed to be sent out to the public that this behaviour would not be tolerated.
He said: “I have to let the public know the courts will not tolerate this activity and abuse of the Internet. The message has to go to the public that young girls of 12, when they do exist, must not be subjected to 29-year-old men committing sex acts.”
When police recovered McCullough’s computers they found pictures of many young girls on the machine.
He had contacted the undercover officer 11 times.
McCullough had pleaded guilty to committing a sex act in the presence of a child and to inciting a child to commit a sex act.
His barrister Charlotte Baines said: “He is thoroughly ashamed and disappointed in himself.”
The club entertainer was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for seven years.
He was also ordered to sign a sex offences prevention order for 10 years which bans him from unsupervised contact with children.
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