A mum who was jailed after faking her own kidnapping in a bid to con her ex out of £2,000 to buy Christmas presents has been freed after winning an appeal on Tuesday.
Leah Jumeaux, 20, of Blackpool, sent her ex photos of herself bound and gagged, using red felt-tip pin in a "crude" attempt to make it look like she was bleeding.
In messages to the man, who she had met on social media, she demanded a £2,000 ransom which she later admitted she wanted to fund a Christmas present spending spree.
But her plan unravelled when he called police and she was found safe and well. She was arrested and immediately owned up to faking the kidnap, before pleading guilty to fraud.
Last month, she was sentenced to 34 weeks' youth detention at Preston Crown Court, but walked free after senior judges at the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence.
Lord Justice William Davis said Jumeaux is a "vulnerable" young mother, who had been suffering with mental health issues and should never have been locked up for the offence.
The court heard Jumeaux and her victim had met online in 2018 and visited each other at their homes before the man began receiving messages purportedly from her ex-boyfriend 'Paddy' in September 2020.
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.
The man called police and Jumeaux was found safe and well, arrested and interviewed.
"She admitted that it had been her sending the messages purporting to come from 'Paddy' and she had sent the photographs," said the appeal judge.
"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 not until last month that her case went to court and she was sentenced.
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.
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.
"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."
The judge, sitting with Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Judge Alan Conrad QC, said the decision would mean Jumeaux can be freed today.
