A LONER who engaged in sexual conversations with undercover police officers believing them to be young girls has been jailed for 28 months.

Mohamed Adia, who lived at home with his elderly mother after his father was murdered in 2002, turned to chat rooms where he befriended 13-year-old Lucy and 12-year-old Ria.

But Bolton Crown Court heard that the schoolgirls were fictional characters created by police in chat rooms.

Over a two-month period from September 2019 51-year-old Adia asked the “girls” for photographs in their school uniforms and requested one take pictures at her school.

On other occasions he described in detail how Ria could perform a sex act upon herself and demanded, the next day, that she tell him about it.

Adia, of Quebec Street, Bolton, also wanted to know about their underwear and discussed arranging a meeting to have sex.

Julian Goode, prosecuting, told how police first encountered Adia, who was using the name Salim, when they created a profile for Lucy on Kik messenger and he added her to Skype.

He was made aware of Lucy’s age chat became increasingly sexualised and, at one stage told her, “I’m always horny”.

The court heard that Adia regularly told the girls to delete their conversations and not tell anyone about them.

In November 2019 he stopped sending messages and on January he was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and two of of attempting to have a sexual conversation with a child.

Colin Buckle, defending told Judge Graeme Smith that after Adia’s siblings married , his own hopes of finding a partner floundered as he wanted to remain with his parents and he has been caring for his widowed mother after the death of his father.

“He describes himself as isolated,” said Mr Buckle, who added that Adia turned to the internet.

“He expressed his sexual urges in the most inappropriate way,” he said.

Judge Smith sentenced Adia to a 28 months in prison. He will be placed on the sex offenders’ register and be subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

Judge Smith described Adia’s conduct as “stupid”.

He said: “You got carried away and lived in a fantasy world. However, what is clear is that, although it was a fantasy world in the sense that you were actually communicating, not with real children, but with undercover police officers, what you were suggesting had a very real dimension to it.

“It is clear you thought you were communicating with two girls aged 13 and 12 and you suggested a number of sexual acts to them.”

• Sentences for paedophiles caught by vigilantes or undercover police have increased since a Court of Appeal decision in April which stated that, where a defendant sets out to sexually abuse a child, but the child happens to be an adult posing as a child, then the starting point for sentencing should be set by considering the harm that the defendant intended to cause.