Nairn man tried to contact 10-year-old 'girl' who was actually an online decoy
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A Nairn man fell into an online trap by responding to a post sent by someone pretending to be a 10-year-old girl.
Fiscal depute Susan Love told Sheriff Sara Matheson that a woman set herself up as a "solo decoy" by posting a message with the user name "offskoolsick" purporting to be the child.
And 62-year-old Harry Croft responded to the online post and eventually there was police involvement, heard Inverness Sheriff Court.
Ms Love told the court that Croft said to the "child" online that he was aged 60.
Croft, of Glenelg Gardens, appeared on indictment via a video link from custody and admitted a contravention of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act at his home address by "intentionally for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification or of humiliating, distressing or alarming a young child" send a sexually written communication and attempt to communicate with a young child and attempt to cause a young child to look at a sexual image on various occasions between May 16, 2022 and July 18, 2022.
Defence solicitor Clare Russell called on Sheriff Matheson to order background reports.
Sheriff Matheson deferred sentence for four weeks to allow reports to be prepared, and placed Croft on the Sex Offenders' Register.
