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Disgraced pharmacist groomed '14-year-old'
The Gazette
|May 30, 2025
SHARED NAKED PHOTO WITH 'FAKE' TEEN BOY
A DISGRACED pharmacist attempted to meet a '14-year-old boy' after days of messaging on Snapchat.
Tony O'Neill sent sexual messages to who he thought was a 14-year-old boy and told officers after his arrest that he felt a "thrill from knowing he still had it".
But the 45-year-old, who opened Escape Games with Peaky Blinders and Hogwarts-themed rooms in Middlesbrough, was actually speaking to a Cleveland Police decoy and was arrested at his place of work, where he had agreed to meet the child, last May.
During a sentencing hearing at Teesside Crown Court, Saba Shan, prosecuting, read dozens of messages shared between the 45-year-old and the "underage teenage", referred to as J, sent over the course of almost two weeks in May last year.
O'Neill had begun messaging J on FabGuys, an adult dating website for gay men with a minimum age limit of 18.
This story is from the May 30, 2025 edition of The Gazette.
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