Sex worker and pimp boyfriend plead guilty after blackmailing engaged punter

Appearing separately at Craigavon Crown Court by videolink from Hydebank women’s prison and Maghaberry respectively, 27-year-old Lorna White and her boyfriend Jason Hamill (31) each entered a guilty plea to a single charge of blackmail.

Hamill, from Main Street in Newtownhamilton and White, from Main Street in Newtonbutler, admitted a joint count of blackmail in that between 5 February and 2 April last year, they demanded £7,900 “with menaces” from their male victim.

When the devious couple were initially charged last April, Hamill had also faced a charge of intentionally causing or inciting White to “become a prostitute in any part of the world, and you did so for or in the expectation of gain for yourself or a third person.”

That charge was not proceeded with by the prosecution but the court heard previously that the new offence was in a similar vein to their previous offence of blackmail.

In July 2019, the couple were handed four year sentences after they admitted extorting more than £3,000 from one of White’s ‘customers’

Jailing sex worker White and her pimp boyfriend Hamill, Judge Gordon Kerr QC told the pair that while his gambling debts were “at the heart” of the case, Hamill was “willingly assisted” by White in the extortion plot.

The judge told them they had caused their victim to undergo “severe stress in his work, his social life and obviously financially” so he was ordering that a BMW car which was seized by police be sold and the victim compensated for the £3,200 he handed over to them.

In that case they had entered guilty pleas to six counts of blackmail against a man White had sex with after he paid her £100.

The blackmail charges reveal that on dates between 1 July 2017 and 10 May 2018, they demanded payments of £100, two of £1,000, culminating in a whopping £3,000.

In a separate indictment, Hamill also confessed to controlling White’s prostitution for gain.

Prosecuting counsel Geraldine McCullough had told the judge the complainant had met with White in July 2018 and had sex with her in a car and in a flat in Tandragee, paying her £100.

Following those trysts however, he was contacted by the couple “on a number of occasions” when they told him he had been photographed and video recorded having sex with White.

He was told to pay them £500 or they would send the video to his fiancée and this later went up to £1,000, said the lawyer adding that as time went on, the threats and demands escalated.

At one stage, they sent the victim a screenshot of him in White’s bedroom but it was then that he contacted the cops and they arrested the couple, seizing their phones.

Ms McCullough said that during initial police interviews, White refused to answer any questions while Hamill claimed he had gone to collect money for his partner for “services rendered.”

The pair were freed on police bail but barred from contacting the victim.

Using social media however, White sent him a message demanding that he withdraw his evidence.

Ms McCullough said that overall, the victim had been forced to hand over £3,200 but added that a BMW car belonging to Hamill had been seized so she was seeking forfeiture of that vehicle, said to be worth around £6,500.

In court on Tuesday, defence barristers Damien Halleron and Seamus Lannon asked for sentencing to be adjourned to allow time for the completion of pre-sentence probation and medical reports.

Remanding the pair back into custody, Judge Patrick Lynch KC said he would deal with the pair on 28 March.