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    Man charged with blackmail over alleged Westminster ‘honey trap’ plot

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    By Craig Munro

    Copyright metro

    Man charged with blackmail over alleged Westminster ‘honey trap’ plot

    Oliver Steadman has been charged over the alleged Westminster ‘honey trap’ scandal (Picture: Islington Council)

    An ex-Labour councillor has been charged with allegedly sending seedy Whatsapp messages to top figures in Westminster in a suspected ‘honey trap’ plot.

    At least a dozen people, including a minister in Rishi Sunak’s government and a senior Labour MP, received flirty missives including nudes last year.

    The apparent ‘spear phishing’ scheme involved texts from unknown numbers posing as people named ‘Abi’, ‘Charlie’ or ‘Charlotte’.

    Oliver Steadman, a 28-year-old former Islington councillor, has now been charged with blackmail and a number of communications offences.

    Then-Conservative MP William Wragg admitted to the Times in April last year that he had given the personal phone numbers of several colleagues to a man he had met on gay dating app Grindr.

    He later resigned the Conservative whip and sat as an Independent MP for a month before Parliament was dissolved for last year’s general election.

    William Wragg was among the figures caught up in the alleged scheme (Picture: Jonathan Nicholson/NurPhoto)

    Malcolm McHaffie of the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘We have decided to prosecute Oliver Steadman with blackmail and five communications offences in relation to a total of five victims working within politics and Westminster.

    ‘This follows an investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service which looked into messages that included alleged unsolicited indecent images sent to a number of people within parliamentary political circles between October 2023 and April 2024 using Whatsapp.

    ‘Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring this case to court and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings.’

    Steadman is set to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on November 3 for his first hearing.

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