A FORMER chairman of Colwall Cricket Club who groomed girls online – engaging them in highly sexualised chats and coercing them into performing sex acts – has been jailed after being caught in a sting by West Midlands Police.

Gary King – whose firm organised cricket tours and festivals for junior girls’ teams – adopted fake instant messenger profiles to instigate explicit conversations with the schoolgirls.

However, one of the ‘girls’ King was trying to groom was actually a covert police officer working to snare paedophiles targeting children online.

The 59-year-old unwittingly instigated explicit exchanges with covert cyber-cops via social media platforms last September and again in March this year.

Officers later arrested King at Stansted Airport as he tried boarding a plane to his Spanish holiday home.

Examination of his laptop revealed evidence of sexual online chats with an unidentified 14-year-old girl from Aylesbury which ran for seven days from the end of April 2017 to the start of May.

And a memory stick seized from his home was also found to contain indecent images of girls which he’d downloaded from the internet.

In a police interview, King, of Creed Road, Oundle, in the east Midlands, admitted the offences but claimed it was “fantasy role play” and that he had no intention of meeting the girls.

He admitted a total of six counts of attempting to incite a child to commit sexual activity with penetration, plus another of making indecent images of children.

And at Birmingham Crown Court, he was jailed for 16 months and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for ten years.

Detective Inspector Nicki Addison said: “King thought he was grooming a girl but in fact it was a covert officer posing as a child to gather evidence against him.

“He deceived vulnerable girls online. Youngsters can be badly scarred psychologically and emotionally through online exchanges with predators like King even if they have not been physically harmed. And offenders need to accept they are likely to be jailed.

“We are working to identify cricket team members King has been in contact with or tours he has arranged. We will be following up those enquiries to see if any children have been affected.

“If any child believes they have been targeted by King – or if any parents suspect their children may have been contacted by him – I’d urge them to call us.”

DI Addison of West Midlands Police’s public protection unit can be reached on the 101 number.