When you’re that much of a c*** that both the Daily Mail and GB News sack you in the space of a week, you’d probably think that things can’t get much worse for you. Well, turns out they can, because Dan Wootton is now at the centre of a police investigation over claims he catfished several men into sending him sexual images by offering money under a pseudonym.

This follows a series of reports by The Byline Times, who claim they have ‘extensive evidence’ to show that, between June 2008 and 2018, Wootton – who is gay – posed as a fictitious showbusiness agent called “Martin Branning” to offer sums of up to £30,000 “tax free” to his targets, many of whom were heterosexual men.

Among his victims are ‘a very senior executive’ at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, staff at The Sun, his own friends, Facebook associates, and users of the dating apps Grindr and Gayda. Here are a few of the allegations published by the paper:

• One victim – who is married with children – told this newspaper that he was left “in shock” to receive a text from “Branning” offering him £10,000 “tax free” in return for “private work” and to “pose nude”, adding that it “felt like blackmail or entrapment”.
• A second victim told Byline Times that Branning had sent him messages from untraceable numbers “day and night” offering sums up to £30,000 in return for sexually compromising pictures “and that sort of thing”. This victim said he had uncovered a “pattern of men who had worked with Wootton” being harassed with unsolicited malicious communications. “It was all pretty much always the same thing, £20-£30,000 for naked photos, ‘aren’t you intrigued about who I am?’ – this sort of stuff, right,” he said – adding that it was driving him “insane” and ultimately provoked him to go to the police, who sent a detective to his home to take a statement in 2019.
• A third victim – a former junior colleague who has indicated that he is willing to speak to the police – revealed how on several occasions he received disguised calls with offers of “work” with a sexual context and said it was “pretty obvious” they were from Wootton.
• A fourth victim – another junior colleague – was contacted on Facebook by Wootton in 2009 posing as a blonde woman called “Maria Joseph” who exchanged “flirty messages” before swapping images of an unconnected female face from reality TV in return for images of the colleague, who is heterosexual and today also married with children. The fourth victim said: “I received a friend request from a girl called ‘Maria Joseph’. Immediately she was very flirty and, having just come out of a messy break-up, I didn’t have my wits about me as much as I should. “‘She’ soon started to send me semi-nude pics and swapped to email and phone. Her number was a New Zealand number as she said she’d just come back from a year over there. As more pics came through, she started to request them from me, which I duly obliged (fortunately I kept my face out of). “Then she started to send ones she’d already sent, which she brushed off with ‘obviously I’m talking to a few guys at the same time’. At this point, I’m being super careful and start to snoop further into her profile. Catfishing wasn’t really a known thing back then, but I knew something was up. “We had five friends in common on Facebook – Dan plus four others. When I clicked the others, the only common link was Dan. Then a video came through of her having sex with a man. However, I recognised him as someone from a reality TV show as he’s a friend of a friend. This made me realise I knew the identity of the girl [and that it could not be legitimate]. So with this, the NZ number, the sole common denominator, I was sure it was him. So, I messaged ‘Maria’ to say ‘Hi Dan, interesting way to get dick pics’. The next day, the profile was gone.”

Oh dear. Wootton already denied the allegations when they were first published by The Byline Times back in July, claiming he was ‘the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind’. He said he had ‘made errors of judgement in the past’, but that the allegations were ‘simply untrue’ and ‘on the advice of my lawyers I cannot comment further’.

Well, I guess he’s got all the time in the world to deal with the allegations now that he’s unemployed, after committing the mortal sin of smirking while Laurence Fox made crass comments about Ava Evans. Which he’d have probably got away with if Fox hadn’t thrown him under the bus immediately afterwards with leaked text messages.

Obviously these sex crimes are all alleged at this point, but the evidence obtained by The Byline Times over the course of three years does not look good for Wootton, and the general sentiment toward him won’t help matters either. Not to worry though – there’s still one internet show that would probably have him, guilty or not.