A DEFENDANT who represented himself in a blackmail trial was cleared by jurors after just one hour.
Lucas Pereria, 24, was accused of conspiring with his friend, Josh Lawrence, also 24, to blackmail a man out of £500,000.
Lawrence admitted the offence on the first day of his trial, but Mr Pereria, who is a former semi-professional footballer in the Conference League South, denied the charge and stood trial at Chelmsford Crown Court without a defence barrister.
The prosecution alleged Mr Pereria was knowingly involved in the blackmail because he, at Lawrence’s request, asked a woman he knew to go to an address in Colchester and check if a man lived there.
Mr Pereria said he asked the woman to go to the address as a favour for Lawrence, and assumed Lawrence had asked him to send a woman there because the man “may have done something bad” or “may have robbed” the co-defendant.
The woman, who Mr Pereria had met on a social media app called Yubo, went to the address and confirmed the man lived there – information which Pereria relayed to Lawrence.
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Masked men then started showing up at the house in Colchester a few hours later, and several threatening messages were sent to the man demanding he pay £500,000.
Mr Pereria repeatedly told a jury he had no idea what he did was linked to any form of blackmail.
He continued by saying he was only aware of the blackmail plot when he was circulated as being wanted by police.
In a closing speech to the jury, he said: “I willingly handed over my phone.
“I willingly handed myself in.
“I did not conceal anything from the police or the prosecution themselves.”
“If I was guilty, why would I give them all this evidence and given police access to my phone?”
He added: “I believe I have already been punished enough for what I have done.
“When you consider the evidence as a whole, there are vast, unbridgeable gaps in the prosecution’s case.”
Mr Pereria added he wanted to apologise to the woman he sent to the man’s house in Colchester and said he would never have done it if he had known it had anything to do with extorting £500,000 from the victim.
Jurors cleared Pereria, of Northolt Road, Harrow, in one hour and one minute.
Josh Lawrence, of Roxseth Green Road, Harrow, will be sentenced later this year.
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