Social media consultant Samantha Wall, 55, has been jailed for her campaigns of abuse and harassment
15:17, 24 Oct 2025Updated 15:18, 24 Oct 2025
Samantha Wall (Image: Facebook)
A social media consultant waged a ‘breathtaking’ campaign of cyberstalking, harassment and abuse against a motivational speaker after meeting him for just two minutes.
Samantha Wall, 55, from Stockport, met the self-employer entrepreneur and author Brad Burton at an event at Aston Villa’s Villa Park stadium in Birmingham in January 2019, attended by around 200 people.
They made ‘small talk’ and she posed for a selfie with him in what a court heard was a brief and ‘innocuous’ encounter.
Soon after she began a much-publicised ‘barrage of online abuse’ against him, which a judge said was ‘of the most egregious kind’ as he jailed her for two years and four months.
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Wall began posting articles and comments about Mr Burton which were ‘intended to damage his reputation’.
She falsely claimed happily married Mr Burton had been ‘harassing and abusing her for over a decade’ Nicholas Flanagan, prosecuting, told Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court.
She went on to accuse him of being poisoning her cat, having affairs and of being a ‘sexual predator and a bully’ amongst other ‘disturbing’ false and libellous accusations.
Samantha Wall (left), victim Brad Burton (centre) and Mr Burton’s friend Alan Price
She used her skills in the world of social media and posted on numerous platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, the court was told.
At one point Mr Burton instructed lawyers, who wrote to Wall and asked her to stop posting about him. She then posted one of the letters on her own social media
In a Twitter post in June 2022, she claimed Mr Burton had tried to kill her. She also blamed him for ‘death threats against her and destroying her car’, the court was told.
She was arrested in September 2022 and briefly ‘went quiet’ online, Mr Flanagan said. But as soon as her police bail expired, she resumed her online attacks on Mr Burton, even claiming he was in prison and that he had a ‘psychopathic twin brother who was covering for him whilst he was in jail.
Mr Burton fought back in tears in court as he spoke of the ‘devastating’ impact of her ‘all-consuming’ campaign against him.
Reading a victim personal statement, he said that due to a ‘perfect storm’ of the pandemic and his ‘daily focus being dominated by dealing with her attacks’ he had to put his primary business into insolvency.
She then responded with ‘sneering and gloating’, posting records of his decision online, he claimed. “Her intentional actions have damaged my career and invaded every aspect of my personal life,” he said.
Wall also targeted a businesswoman, Naomi Timperley, who she had never even met. Ms Timperley said she had been ‘harassed’ by Wall for around three years. She was named in posts which ‘contained lies and defamation’, the court was told.
Naomi Timperley and Brad Burton outside court(Image: Jason Roberts / Manchester Evening News)
In one LinkedIn post about her, Wall said: “Time to take more #criminal action with you all – you won’t like it.” Ms Timperley, the court was told, took that as a ‘direct threat’.
Her children were worried she would turn at their home, Mr Flanagan said. In her victim personal statement, which she also read to the court, Ms Timperley said the ‘internet was weaponised against me’ and ‘used to intimidate, control, to humiliate’.
She added: “For over two and a half years I was hunted through hashtags, chased through timelines, cornered in comments sections. My name dragged through the digital spaces that once held community but became cages of cruelty.”
Wall, of Butterfield Close, Cheadle, Stockport, initially denied improper use of a public, electronic communication network and two counts of stalking.
She changed her pleas on the day her trial was due to begin in November last year. She admitted stalking Mr Burton between January 2023 and July 2023, and against Ms Timerley over four days in July 2023.
Emma Clarke, defending, said a psychiatrist had concluded she had been suffering with a ‘delusional disorder’ for a period of around five years but that Wall was ‘entirely unaware’ until the court appointed doctor diagnosed her.
She said she had no previous convictions and that if it had not been for ‘whatever led to this delusional disorder, she would never have behaved in this way’.
She said since the details of the case had been published in the media, Wall had herself been the victim of ‘abhorrent’ online abuse and that ‘the effect of this on her mental health cannot understated’.
Judge Neil Usher said the abuse against Mr Burton ‘no doubt was calculated to destroy his name and smear him personally’.
“The breadth and scale of the online campaign over a period of four years against a totally innocent man was breathtaking,” he said. It had clearly caused ‘very serious distress to him and his family and has undoubtedly caused psychological harm.”
He told Wall her condition had ‘to a degree impacted on your culpability’ but that ‘although it may go some way to explain your behaviour, it cannot completely explain it, nor does it excuse it.’
He said that she had managed to stop offending whilst on bail after her first arrest, but that then when the bail expired, her campaign ‘immediately continued unabated.’
“You have had delusions about your victims,” he told her. “But your condition didn’t compel you to act on these delusions to the extreme gravity you did.
“You had the ability to stop putting these posts up, you simply chose not to,” he added.
The judge said publicity of the case had seen her subjected to ‘punishment by media’ and that her ‘name had become synonymous with online stalking’.