A man who created fake pornographic images of a work colleague and posted them online was found guilty of harassment on Friday (27 April).
Former M&G employee Davide Buccheri, 25, previously of London, was convicted at Westminster Magistrates' Court following a three-day trial.
The court heard how, over a number of months, Buccheri set out to embarrass, discredit and cause significant anxiety to one of his female work colleagues after she rejected his romantic advances in the summer of 2016.
Buccheri obtained a number of images of his victim from her social media accounts and a number of pornographic images from the internet of women with a similar build and appearance to his victim.
He then cropped the pornographic images to remove the faces. These images were uploaded by Buccheri, along with the genuine images of his victim, to multiple galleries on a pornographic website.
Following this, Buccheri used an internal whistleblowing tool at their place of work to report the images to the company’s HR department in a bid to tarnish her reputation.
The account that uploaded the photos to the pornographic website was traced back to an IP address belonging to Buccheri.
A search of his home led to the police finding a laptop containing drafts of the complaints Buccheri sent to the internal whistle blowing tool, saved pictures of his victim from her Facebook profile, and pornographic images identical to the ones uploaded to the website.
The same images were found on Buccheri’s phone and his browser history showed he had accessed the victim's Facebook profile numerous times.
Also on the laptop was evidence Buccheri had designed special web scripts to ensure the page featuring the victim's photos had maximum web traffic.
The scripts were created to repeatedly view the specific web address of the gallery containing the photos so it would appear on the homepage of the pornographic website and at the top of any website search results.
Detective Inspector Gary Robinson, from the City of London Police Cyber Crime Unit, said: "The City of London Police hope today's verdict brings some comfort to the victim, after what was a cruel and vindictive crime that caused great distress.
"Many perpetrators believe they will not get caught when committing crimes from the safety of their own home online. Today we have shown that is not the case and the police have extremely effective ways of building a strong case against individuals carrying out cyber offences."
A spokesman for M&G said: "We are pleased to hear that this distressing case has ended with a conviction.
"M&G does not tolerate harassment of any kind, and we have very clear processes for identifying, investigating and resolving any issues which arise.
"We would like to thank the City of London Police, with whom we have worked closely to help bring the individual involved to justice.
"We are continuing to support the M&G staff involved in this case."
Buccheri will be sentenced tomorrow (1 May) at the same court. The trial was originally set to take place in December 2017 but was adjourned and it was further delayed in March 2018 after Buccheri sacked his legal team.
emma.hughes@ft.com
