Premier League youth players targeted by Snapchat groomers posing as agents

Scale of new online menace facing young footballers revealed by pioneering project at Everton’s academy

Jason Dunford, Steve Walters, Chris Unsworth and Andy Woodward speak out about football abuse to Victoria Derbyshire. Photograph: BBC

Paedophiles are targeting Premier League youth players on Snapchat by posing as football agents and scouts in a bid to groom and entrap them.

Adam Green, head of safeguarding at Everton, said that last season young players at the club revealed they had been approached through the messaging app by men who claimed they wanted to sign or represent them.

The disclosures came when the club ran a project with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a charity that works to eliminate child sexual abuse. The project aims to teach young players about the dangers they face online and how to conduct themselves appropriately.

Green said this method of online grooming was “very prevalent” and he had heard of other cases across the country. “On Snapchat it just says a name like Ben at the top and [the message says]: ‘I’m from an agency representing players from Manchester and London, and we have offices in both places and we’ve been watching you with interest, following you, and we’re interested in signing you for this agency. Don’t tell your dad. Don’t tell your club.’”

Concerns about Snapchat messages were first raised by two younger boys. When Green mentioned the cases to 17 and 18-year-old players in one of the IWF training sessions they showed him dozens of similar messages.

He said gangs were also trying to blackmail young footballers via sexting. “There have been cases coming to court of academy footballers from all different clubs [being] told that they had to pay £50,000 if they don’t want their penis pictures sent all over the internet.”

The warning comes after several high-profile players have fallen victim to a scam known as “catfishing” where they are duped into interacting intimately with women or men via webcams. In April it was reported that a video of the former England goalkeeper David James performing a sex act during a Skype call had been leaked online.

Andy Wood, leader of the IWF project, said: “That video’s now on lots of gay porn sites. You don’t know who the people on the other end of the webcam are.”