Paedophile caught by investigators after sharing child abuse images from home WiFi jailed

A paedophile who photographed himself repeatedly sexually abusing a child has been jailed for four years.

Alan Moir was caught after cybercrime investigators discovered he was using his home WiFi to share the content.

The 43-year-old was brought to justice after the police received intelligence from the National Online Child Abuse Prevention (NOCAP) organisation.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard how NOCAP had discovered that an Internet Protocol address had been sharing child abuse content.

Investigators discovered the IP address was linked to Moir’s home in St Cyrus, Aberdeenshire.

The court heard that investigators found that the explicit content was being shared from an app called Dropbox registered to an email address linked to Moir.

This information led to police obtaining a search warrant for Moir’s home.

Officers seized a mobile phone from Moir following a raid at his home on November 25, 2023.

They also found a second handset in the top drawer of a cabinet in the main bedroom of his property.

Upon examining the devices, officers found images of Moir sexually assaulting a girl who was aged eight to nine.

Prosecutor William Frain-Bell KC told Judge Lady Haldane that a total of 1,663 inaccessible still images of abuse were found on the handsets.

The story emerged after Moir pleaded guilty to a charge of sexually assaulting a young child on two occasions between January 1, 2018 and August 12, 2019. He also admitted a charge of permitting to take or make indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children between May 1, 2018 and November 15, 2023.

An IP address is a unique numerical identifier assigned to each device or network on a computer network using the Internet Protocol.

On a Wi-Fi network, your device gets an IP address from your router, which allows it to communicate on the network and the Internet.

Police arrested Moir and took him into custody following the raid at the home. He gave a no comment interview.”

During the police probe, officers found that Moir had taken indecent photos of another girl who was thought to be aged between 15 and 17 at the time.

Mr Frain-Bell said there were over 80 indecent images taken of Moir’s first victim and over 150 indecent “pseudo-photographs” of his second victim.

The advocate depute added: “There were over 1,400 indecent images of other young girls aged between one and 13 years of age.”

The court heard that Moir was a first offender who had worked in the oil and gas industry prior to his arrest.

Passing sentence, Lady Haldane told Moir that he needed to go to prison for his crimes.

She added: “You have pleaded guilty to two very serious offences – the first involving the sexual assault and sexual assault by penetration of a young child and the second of taking and making images of pseudo images of young children.”

The judge said it was clear that “significant harm” has been caused to the child victim.

Moir was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life.

Detective inspector Ryan Morris said: “By admitting to these horrific offences over a significant period of time, Moir has proved he is a sexual predator and now faces the consequences.

“Working with our partner agencies we were able to identify his online footprint and expose the level of offending he is responsible for.

“Offenders cannot hide behind the internet. We have specially trained officers and cybercrime teams to track them down.

“I’d urge anyone who has been a victim of a sexual offence or anyone with information about those involved in such crimes, to come forward and report it to us, regardless of when it happened. All reports are fully investigated.”