The account used the image of a younger bearded man and listed its location as Christchurch.<\/p>\n
The trial is ongoing in the Dunedin High Court. Photo \/ George Heard<\/p>\n
When the woman asked, \u201cDo I know you?\u201d, the sender did not answer directly, instead claiming Facebook had suggested her profile. <\/p>\n
She told him not to contact her again and blocked the account.<\/p>\n
Over the following weeks, two handwritten letters were delivered to the woman\u2019s home address, both signed by the pseudonym. <\/p>\n
One claimed the writer had recently moved into the area and wanted to make friends.<\/p>\n
The second was sexually explicit, stating the writer had watched the couple having sex inside their home and had masturbated while doing so.<\/p>\n
The defendant accepted that he wrote and delivered the letters, the summary of facts states.<\/p>\n
Over a 10-month period, the woman received nearly 200 further messages from the fake profile account, the court heard.<\/p>\n
During those exchanges, the sender eventually revealed he was the Uber driver from the September 2022 trip. <\/p>\n
The messages escalated to include explicit images.<\/p>\n
The final contact was in July 2023.<\/p>\n
The court was told the woman and her partner separated in early 2023, and she moved to a different address.<\/p>\n
In June that year, the defendant allegedly used the same pseudonym to contact the woman\u2019s former partner, making false claims about her.<\/p>\n
Later that month, the woman and a friend called the profile and recorded a conversation with the defendant, who maintained the false identity and accepted he had sent the messages.<\/p>\n
The summary of facts also records that another woman received messages and calls from the same fake profile in May 2023. <\/p>\n
The defendant accepted he was responsible for those communications.<\/p>\n
Police linked the offending to the defendant through Uber records, phone data and digital evidence.<\/p>\n
A phone number associated with the communications was registered to the defendant at a Dunedin address, and telecommunications data showed it was active in relevant locations.<\/p>\n
When police executed a search warrant at his home in October 2023, they seized electronic devices, including a mobile phone containing conversations between the fake profile account and the victims.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The account used the image of a younger bearded man and listed its location as Christchurch. The trial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1117,5811,74,9092,95,17704,1738,19552,6788,73195,37483,75013,8454,22500,20925,29546,60677,111,43,139,69,1118,30083,29459,34111,3466,89271,7489,1354],"class_list":["post-355924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-accused","tag-admitted","tag-after","tag-against","tag-and","tag-assault","tag-campaign","tag-driver","tag-dunedin","tag-explicit","tag-fake","tag-harassment","tag-including","tag-indecent","tag-kidnapping","tag-letters","tag-messages","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-offences","tag-passengers","tag-profile","tag-sending","tag-sustained","tag-uber","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}