Police constable jailed for helping sex worker blackmail client

A disgraced police constable has been jailed after helping a sex worker track down a client she claimed had conned her.

PC Steven Charletta, 60, carried out a number plate check on a BMW that the man had driven to meet Freya Shaw, who said she’d been handed an envelope containing scrap paper instead of a £500 fee.

Falkirk Sheriff Court was told the man – a 29-year-old mechanic who has since died – had told Shaw that the BMW belonged to a customer and he wanted to have sex in the back.

Steven Charletta, 60, quit Police Scotland after being convicted for data protection and fraud offences. Central Scotland News Agency

Charletta’s checks revealed, however, that the registered keeper was in fact the man’s partner of ten years.

Charletta, stationed at Cowdenbeath, Fife, went to the registered keeper in his Police Scotland uniform – while a colleague was waiting in a van, thinking he was on a legitimate job – and asked who the male driver had been.

Then he returned, still in uniform, and took the mechanic’s details, citing an insurance claim.

Chloe Sinclair arriving at Falkirk Sheriff Court. Central Scotland News Agency

He passed the information to a female friend, Chloe Sinclair, 30, whom he had been bankrolling through an Open University law degree.

Sinclair passed it to her sister, Shaw, 25, who had performed the sex work.

Shaw then contacted the client’s partner.

The court heard the man “was driven to the brink of suicide” and made a payment of £275 to Shaw over PayPal.

Freya Shaw arriving at Falkirk Sheriff Court. Central Scotland News Agency

At one point, he sent Shaw a message that read: “You’re going to ruin my life because I don’t have a penny more to give you after you made a deal.”

At the end of a seven-day trial in August, Sinclair and Shaw were found guilty of extortion, while Charletta was found guilty of fraud, attempting to pervert the course of justice, and breaching the Data Protection Act.

They had denied all the charges.

Shaw, an unemployed mother-of-one, said in evidence that she had been she been selling lingerie photos on Snapchat during lockdown when she received a request on May 12, 2020, from the man, who called himself “Danny”, asking to meet up.

She said: “I finally said I would meet him for £500.”

Shaw said when she entered “Danny’s” car, he was wearing nothing on his bottom half except shoes.

She said he claimed to have left work in a customer’s car and asked to have sex in the back but they agreed on a different service.

She said: “He had an envelope sitting on the top of his dashboard.

“He took it, opened it and counted £500. I just don’t understand how he managed to change that envelope.”

She photographed the BMW’s registration.

Sinclair, a hotel receptionist and mother of three, said: “Freya came in quite upset with an envelope that was just full of cut-up bits of paper. It was meant to be £500.”

She drafted a message to Charletta, sent from Shaw’s phone, quoting the number plate and asking the police officer for details.

She said she did not plan to use the details to blackmail “Danny” and did not know what her sister would do with them.

Charletta, who joined the police in 2003 and resigned following conviction, accepted he had run the checks and dropped off notes at Sinclair’s home with details of the BMW’s owner and the man.

He claimed the sisters had flagged him down while on duty on May 17, 2020 and reported its driver as a suspected drug dealer.

Charletta, of Kennoway, Fife; Sinclair, of Cowdenbeath, also Fife; and Shaw, of Dumbarton, appeared for sentencing on Tuesday.

In mitigation, Mark Moir KC, for Charletta, said: “He has brought disgrace upon himself and lost his job of 25 years.”

Sheriff Paul Ralph jailed Charletta for two years, and sentenced Shaw to 300 hours of unpaid work and Sinclair to 200 hours.

He told Charletta it was “a perplexing mystery” and “utterly confounding” that a police officer held in good regard by colleagues during a long career should behave the way he did.

He said: “You played a vital part in a sordid scheme to obtain a paltry sum of money from someone.

“While your actions have been calamitous for you, the real tragedy is that what your choices have done is make the jobs of your now ex-colleagues harder, by eroding public confidence.

“Your behaviours in committing a fraud in police uniform and then, as a serving police officer, attempting to pervert the course of justice, mean I do not consider an alternative disposal to be appropriate.

“You decided to obtain information from police systems for a purpose you knew to be illegal. You followed that up with your decision to visit a property and make false representations to an entirely innocent member of the public.”

Charletta showed no emotion as he was led to the cells.

Police Scotland chief superintendent Helen Harrison said: “Steven Charletta abused his position as a police officer to access police systems to obtain and provide information that he had no right to.

“I’d like to again commend the cooperation and strength of the witnesses who have been involved throughout this case.

“Trust and confidence in police officers and staff is essential and people like Steven Charletta have no place in Police Scotland. Any officer or staff member who fails to uphold the high standards we expect in policing will face the consequences.

“We will always investigate complaints against police officers and staff who do not uphold our values and standards.”