Jailed: Fake cop stopped woman in luxury car to demand cash and sexual favour
A bogus policeman who stopped a stranger driving a luxury car through Shropshire and asked for “four grand” and a sexual favour has been jailed for more than two years.
Jimmy Cash, 28, admitted blackmail, false imprisonment and impersonating a police officer in Whitchurch last October.
The victim saw a hired Audi come up close behind her at Bronington on the England/Wales border when the headlights flashed three times, prosecutor Brian Treadwell told Caernarfon Crown Court.
The Audi overtook and Cash gestured for her to pull over.
The defendant, dressed in black, pretended he was from the "drugs squad" and threatened the woman with a speeding ban.
The victim said he had been “very convincing” until he asked her for a sexual favour instead.
Mr Treadwell said the scared victim felt trapped in her car with Cash, a traveller of Christchurch, Dorset,
She drove him for 20 minutes to Whitchurch and pulled over with Cash warning she had five minutes to get the money or she wouldn’t walk again.
The woman went to a cafe and asked staff to call police.
Cash surrendered himself for questioning by police later the same month.
Defence QC James Scobie said Cash had been short of money, lost his respect within the travelling community and wasn't a sexual offender.
"This isn’t somebody who was anything other than a chancer who clearly hasn’t thought this thing through at all," he said, adding that it was a "one-off".
Jailing for Cash for 32 months, Judge Rhys Rowlands said: "This was a truly terrifying ordeal for the victim. The effect on her has been profound.
“She wasn’t to know you were not interested in the sexual favours.
“Women such as the victim are entitled to be out and about safe from harm and being targeted by men such as yourself.”
