THIS is the Romanian criminal who hounded Co Tyrone teenager Ronan Hughes to his death.
From the bedroom of his flat in Timisoara on the Hungarian border, Iulian Enache (32) concocted three fake identities, pretending to be teenage girls to trick the trusting schoolboy into sharing embarrassing images online.
A single slip-up allowed the PSNI cyber-crime team to trace the source of his subsequent blackmail threats to Romania and eventually to Enache himself.
He was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on a flat he shared with two other people who were unaware of the crimes being committed under their roof.
Enache "showed no remorse" during interviews, refusing to answer questions put to him by prosecutors, before finally pleading guilty to charges last week.
The Irish News understands that he was acting alone and so far it appears that the Clonoe teenager, who took his own life in June 2015, was his first and last victim.
PSNI Detective Chief Inspector James Mullen said he believes it is the first conviction for a cyber blackmail victim in the UK.
"There's been hundreds of these cases right across the UK and I don't know of any other at the moment," he said.
Mr Mullen added that following the brave decision of Ronan Hughes's parents to highlight their loss and the 17-year-old's ordeal, the number of reports of webcam extortion in Northern Ireland have rocketed.
"Last year there were about three of these a week," he said.
"That is not a bad thing because people are having the confidence to come forward and tell us."
In the immediate aftermath of Ronan's death, police were criticised for a "dismissive" attitude to the teenager when he sought help in the days before he took his own life.
Mr Mullen said practices have been reviewed since then and there is a focus on safeguarding victims.
He also paid tribute to other police forces and to Europol, the EU agency for law enforcement cooperation.
"Without Europol, without the Romanian police, without the Scottish police this would have been a lot more difficult."
