Highland man had hundreds of videos and images of children being sexually abused
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A man who downloaded vile images of babies and young children being sexually abused claimed he did it to try and trap paedophiles.
But Nicholas Ferguson now faces a jail sentence as his alleged activity was still illegal and he admitted several offences at Inverness Sheriff Court today.
Sheriff Sara Matheson heard that Ferguson sent screenshots from an obscene video of a child performing a sex act on an adult to an Elgin man he suspected could be an abuser.
The Moray man then reported it to police after being engaged in sexually explicit online conversations with Ferguson in February 2019. Ferguson also claimed to have had sex with children as young as five.
Fiscal depute David Morton said suspicion fell on Ferguson (31) who was a possible suspect and had a pending case for a similar offence.
He was traced to an address in Dalneigh and a laptop and phone were seized. The phone had the same number as used to contact the Elgin man.
Mr Morton said that Ferguson told officers during the police interview he was "hoping to try and lure people into admitting things in the hope of finding predators".
Ferguson was arrested and charged but released on bail in April 2019. On August 30, 2019, Ferguson was filmed on CCTV in a city centre takeaway, physically assaulting a woman's son by pushing him to the side of the head.
This was also in breach of a special bail condition not to have any contact with children aged under 16. Another was not to possess an internet enabled device.
A further mobile phone was taken by the police and during 2019, his electronic equipment was analysed.
Experts discovered he was using social media to send or receive indecent videos and images.
A total of 494 images were recovered from one device, with a third of them being of the most obscene type.
Also 165 videos were found and most of them were in the same category.
The court heard Ferguson's cloud storage of images and videos depicted extreme sexual activity involving babies and young children.
Further interrogation of another device belonging to Ferguson and obtained in an Inverness shop discovered 129 images and 53 videos created while he was on bail, between September 2019 and December 2019.
Again most were in the highest category of depravity, involving boys aged between two and 10 which, the sheriff was told, "their horrendous distress could be heard".
Ferguson, of St Ninian's Drive, Inverness pleaded guilty to assault, two breaches of bail, downloading, possessing and distributing indecent images and making an indecent communication.
He was immediately placed on the Sex Offenders' Register, and had sentence deferred until January 19 for a background report.
His bail was continued. Defence solicitor advocate Shahid Latif said his client had no previous convictions and would reserve his comments until sentencing.
