She told police she had given the account over to her son, who she said worked as an escort and “talked sexy” to callers in his bedroom. Initially his mother, Mary, was arrested because the bank account given to callers was in her name. “He threatened to bring shame on their families by exposing the content of the calls about underage sex.” One caller, aged 40, even claimed the stress of his £2,100 debt to Sutherland may have been a factor when he was diagnosed with epilepsy, according to procurator fiscal Graeme Jessop.įiscal depute Graeme Jessop told court: “Once police heard from one caller, they began recording calls to his number. The court was told that every single caller had told police that the person on the other end of the line had initiated the discussions about underage sex, although Sutherland protested this. She said: “Because of the content of the articles he had to effectively go into protection.” She also told that court that the teenager had to be put into protection at Polmont whilst in custody after other prisoners found out what he had done in the newspapers. He did then go on to extort the money from them.” “He anonymously reported several of these people on the Crimestoppers number. “The chats which caused him to act related to underage persons because of his background and what happened to him – he found this very difficult. She said: “That’s the view he has of them. Miss Cooper told the court today that he maintained this position. When Sutherland was last in court in August, he shouted out during the case that the men had been “paedophiles”. “It was the content of their messages and their chat which prompted him to ask for the money.” “It’s his position that these were carousel chat lines – that he could listen to the messages that these people had left, he could leave messages and he could contact them. There was never any suggestion that he did set up chat lines. Ms Cooper said: “The position of the accused is that he didn’t set up chat lines. She also told the court that he didn’t set up the chat lines, but was working on them when he felt he had to act after some of the clients started to talk about underage children. “This is what coloured his view as far as chat lines are concerned.” She said: “That older man harboured him and sexually abused him and introduced him to chat lines at an extremely young age. She told the court that the teenager had been put into a secure school when he was younger and absconded, leaving him in the hands of an older man. His defence agent, Fiona Cooper, said that Sutherland’s troubled background and family life had left him with certain feelings about both chat lines and paedophiles. The elaborate scam only came to light when one of the men contacted police, who then set up a sting codenamed ‘Operation Machine’ to track down Sutherland.īy tracing the bank details given to the callers, detectives found he had been leading a lavish lifestyle of chauffeur driven cars and nights out at expensive bars with the extorted cash.Īnd today at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, Sheriff Deidre MacNeill QC sentenced Sutherland to three years and nine months behind bars for extorting £87,700 from 10 men aged between 32 and 65 years old between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2009.
Others said they were left stressed when Sutherland – acting as an official from the chat lines – repeatedly harassed them for payments. Some of the blackmail victims were left in serious financial difficulty.
However he said they could be deleted from the ‘system’ for a fee, pocketing himself thousands of pounds. He then warned callers that the discussions were illegal and recordings could be sent to police. Often putting on a voice, he would quickly lead the caller into talking about underage sex before interrupting the call with using a different voice pretending to be a call monitor. Kelz Sutherland, 19, – also known as William Watson – worked on a sex hotline from his bedroom at the family home in Edinburgh taking incoming calls from men who had seen adverts in magazines. The flat in Portobello where Sutherland extorted money through a gay chat line.Ī TEENAGER who extorted almost £90,000 from 10 men on gay sex chat lines by threatening to play recordings of their sordid calls to their families, friends and the police has been jailed for 45 months.