Mum who faked her own kidnapping with pics of herself bound & gagged to swindle £2k is FREED from jail early
A MUM who was jailed for faking her own kidnapping in a chilling bid to con her ex out of £2k for presents has today been FREED.
Swindling Leah Jumeaux, 20, sent her ex boyfriend pictures of herself bound and gagged and demanded a ransom for her safe return.
The mum-of-one, from Blackpool, had drawn on herself using red pen in a “crude” attempt to make it look like she was bleeding.
She demanded £2,000 from her victim, who she met on social media, and admitted that she wanted the cash to fund a Christmas spending spree.
But her then partner contacted the police, causing her fake kidnap plot to unravel after she was arrested and admitted her plan to cops.
Last month she was sentenced to 34 weeks in a youth detention centre at Preston Crown Court, but today senior judges have overturned her sentence – meaning she will walk free today.
Lord Justice William Davis told the Court of Appeal that Jumeaux is a "vulnerable" young mother, who had been suffering with mental health issues and should never have been locked up for the offence.
Jumeaux and her victim had met online in 2018 and visited each other at their homes before the man began receiving messages which were reportedly from her ex-boyfriend 'Paddy' in September 2020.
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While away on holiday in France, the man received a "disturbing" WhatsApp message from 'Paddy', containing a photograph showing Jumeaux lying on the floor, bound and gagged.
Further threatening messages contained demands for money, initially £2,000 but later reduced to £1,000, some of them accompanied by photographs of what looked like a rifle.
Justice Davis said: "She admitted that it had been her sending the messages purporting to come from 'Paddy' and she had sent the photographs.
"She said she did it to get money in order to buy Christmas presents.
"In one sense the photograph is quite disturbing. However, the disturbing nature is somewhat undermined by the crude application of red felt-tip pen, purporting to be blood, which obviously it wasn't."
Despite admitting what she had done, it was another year before Jumeaux was charged with an offence and was only sentenced last month.
Quashing her 34-week sentence today, Lord Justice William Davis said Jumeaux should not have been locked up, given the delay in the case getting to court, her immediate admission of guilt and her mental health issues.
The judge, sitting with Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Judge Alan Conrad QC, said the decision would mean Jumeaux can be freed today.
'EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY'
A psychiatrist who assessed her said she suffered from a disorder involving "emotional instability" which would have affected her decision-making at the time of the offence.
"We are quite satisfied that the sentence imposed was manifestly excessive and wrong in principle," said the judge.
"She was and is a vulnerable young woman. She was only 19 at the time of the offence.
"The judge said he took her age and vulnerability into account, but if he did so then he failed to do so to the appropriate and necessary extent.
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"There were very substantial mitigating factors: her good character, her age and mental health, her caring responsibilities for her child, her early admissions to police and the substantial delay in criminal proceedings getting underway.
"She has been in custody for three-and-a-half weeks. In our view, the proper course for us to take now is to quash the sentence of detention and impose in its place a community order for two years."