A 46-year-old convicted child sex offender from Llanelli who opened a Vinted account in a fake name and sent sexualised messages to users of the platform—including asking someone claiming to be 16 about “JO”—has been handed a suspended prison sentence at Swansea Crown Court.
Simon Fuge, aged 46 and residing at Ty Stafford, Llanelli, appeared in the dock for sentence at Swansea Crown Court on Thursday 12 November 2026 having previously pleaded guilty to breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) and attempted breach of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Prosecutor Brian Simpson told the court that in 2018, Fuge was sentenced to 54 months’ imprisonment for causing a child to engage in sexual activity and made subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order. That earlier offending had involved Fuge creating a fake Facebook profile of a teenage girl to lure a schoolboy into sexual activity, posing as a friend of the non-existent girl and grooming the child over several weeks—including buying him sweets and taking him to the cinema—before performing a sex act on him.
Under the terms of his 2018 Sexual Harm Prevention Order, Fuge was prohibited from having unsupervised contact with under-18s and banned from using social media applications under other names, with monitoring software installed on his mobile phones as part of his community management arrangements.
The court heard that in December 2025, the monitoring software alerted police to Fuge’s use of the Vinted clothes-buying and selling application. Officers remotely accessed his devices and observed sexual contact with a fellow user—including discussions about his penis—though no criminal offences were recorded at that stage.
However, following further enquiries into Fuge’s online activities—which also uncovered sexual messages on WhatsApp, though with no evidence the recipient was a child—officers attended Fuge’s home address in Llanelli on Saturday 28 February 2026. It took “some time” for Fuge to answer the door, and when officers seized and examined his phones, the conversations previously viewed remotely had been deleted—a delay prosecutors suspected Fuge used to erase incriminating chats.
Police did, however, recover other chats on the Vinted app, including an exchange that began about clothes with a user claiming to be 16, during which Fuge asked the unknown seller about “JO”, which officers believed stood for “jerking off”. Investigators also discovered that Fuge had operated an earlier Vinted account under the username “Levi2025MonekyBoy”, which had been cancelled by the platform following multiple reports of concern regarding messages he was sending. In police interview, Fuge denied having contact with children and claimed Vinted was an adult-only platform he used to buy and sell clothes.
For the defence, Dean Pulling noted that while the breach was deliberate, there was no evidence Fuge had been in contact with anyone under 16 or made any attempt to meet, noting that Vinted operated an over-18s policy and that Fuge had also used the platform legitimately. He added that this represented Fuge’s first breach since the order was imposed in 2018 and submitted supportive references from neighbours and friends aware of his background.
Under the provisions of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, the child victim from Fuge’s 2018 conviction—as well as any under-18s contacted online—is protected by mandatory, lifelong statutory anonymity from the moment an allegation is made. Any publication, broadcast, or public dissemination of information capable of leading to their identification is strictly prohibited under UK law.
Passing sentence at Swansea Crown Court on Thursday 12 November 2026, Judge Huw Rees noted that as the appropriate custodial term fell under 12 months, he was required by law to suspend it absent exceptional circumstances. Applying a one-quarter discount for Fuge’s guilty pleas, Judge Rees imposed a sentence of six months’ imprisonment suspended for 18 months, alongside ordering him to complete an accredited programme and a probation requirement, warning Fuge that police would continue to monitor him closely in hopes rehabilitation would prevent further “poisonous and harmful” conduct.
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