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Dan Wootton Paid Porn Stars with Sun’s Depp Money for Covert Catfish Sex Videos
GB News presenter Dan Wootton paid adult film stars to meet gay men he had catfished in order to secretly record them having sex, Byline Times can reveal.
Wootton ‘rented’ the Facebook profiles of at least three different male porn performers for up to £500 a time, before posing as them and tricking his targets into meetings to be covertly filmed with cameras he supplied.
At least one of these meetings took place in a hotel paid for by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun newspaper – of which Wootton was associate editor at the time.
The journalist also charged a £1,500 porn star’s fee for the ‘private work’ to his then employers News UK – disguised as payment to a ‘contact’ for a front-page story about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
This newspaper has interviewed two of the adult performers involved and has evidence from another man also paid by Wootton to make secret sex tapes for him.
Byline Times has also identified two of the victims of Wootton’s catfishing conspiracy, which is separate to his use of the pseudonyms ‘Martin Branning’ and ‘Maria Joseph’, to trick scores of other male victims into revealing compromising sexual material.
For legal reasons, we are not naming the others involved.
However, it can be confirmed that two have given information to the police about their experiences with Wootton between 2009 and 2016 – during which time he worked successively for the now-defunct News of the World, the Daily Mail and The Sun.
In this fourth part of a special three-year investigation into Dan Wootton’s personal and professional conduct, the male porn stars have revealed how the presenter paid to use their Facebook profiles to target men of interest.
One told this newspaper: “Dan used to pay us anywhere between £300 and £500 to use our Facebooks. I didn’t know these people he was messaging. It was all males. He was messaging [as] ‘me’ basically.”
He added: “I know he was using the Facebook of two other [adult entertainers]. I was watching the messages on [one of the adult entertainer’s accounts] to this other lad, but he [Wootton] was deleting them – as they were firing out and coming back, he was deleting them as they were going [along].”
Asked if Wootton was destroying evidence on a rolling basis as it came up, the entertainer said: “Yes… Dan was doing it.”
The other adult entertainer said he allowed Wootton to use his Facebook profile because he needed the “easy money” and described seeing the now GB News star targeting “five or six” men from one account.
He said: “He paid me to use my Facebook account. I still had access to it as well but I gave him my password. And then when I felt he’d had enough [time], I’d change my password.”
“After a while, Dan would message me,” he added. “[Wootton would say] ‘I’ve got a guy here. Are you interested in coming down and filming it?’”
The first entertainer continued: “So, he was literally paying people to use their Facebooks [accounts] and film people [having sex]. These people we used to meet, I don’t know who they were. I think they were from Dan’s circle, and [the films] were [an attempt] to get one-up [on them].
“I can’t say for certain but I think it was to get [compromising material] on people… That is my belief. Why else would you want someone filmed without their knowledge and be so adamant you want it filmed?”
In 2016, Wootton told the two porn actors, then aged in their mid-20s, to meet him outside The Sun’s offices in London Bridge and issued them with details of a target, filming equipment, and directorial instructions.
The first porn actor said: “There were two cameras and an iPad we had to pick up from Dan from The [Baby] Shard.” He noticed that the iPad was logged into Wootton’s Apple iCloud via his Apple ID.
“This was in 2016,” he continued. “I was in the back of the car when Dan got into it. The guy ‘we’ were messaging [the target] – you could tell [from the content of the messages] didn’t want it filmed.
“But Dan’s like ‘I don’t care what he says, you get in there and get the film. Before you even go into the house get the cameras on – I want the walk-in’.”
The actor told Wootton “you can’t f*****g do that Dan” and says the presenter responded by saying “don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine”.
The first actor was reluctant to carry on without the target’s permission. “So I said to [the second actor] ‘no, we’re not doing that. We’re not f*****g filming someone without their consent. We’re not doing it’.”
When they approached their target, he was sceptical. “We knocked on his door, introduced ourselves, and he was like ‘I don’t believe you – two porn stars want to come down and film me?’
“And I was like ‘yeah, it’s what we do. Basically, it’s for personal use. This is what me and my mate do, we go around f*****g people for a laugh.
“The guy could tell [something was amiss]. He weren’t buying the story. After about 10-15 minutes’ free-play [lighter sexual activity]… I advised him that the camera was going to come out. He was like ‘no, no, no, I don’t want it filmed, I don’t want it filmed!’
“I was like ‘okay, well, that’s kind of it then’. We didn’t get anything on film. So, we took Dan’s cameras back and he said ‘you boys head back to [their home location] and I’ll sort your money out’.”
The second actor told of another occasion on which Wootton instructed him and a different well-known male porn star to target a man he had catfished into a meeting in a hotel very close to Wootton’s then home in east London.
The entertainer said: “We went to Dan’s flat in London. He was asking us to film another chap, and he wanted it secret… he wanted it filmed secretly.”
Explaining that the target agreed to having the film made on the proviso it was for the private use of consenting parties, he added: “So we filmed that and gave it to Dan. Dan was happy with it and he paid us. I think it was £500 each. I can’t remember if it was paid in cash or by bank transfer.”
Wootton always booked the hotels where some of the meetings took place. Among these occasions was one on June 12 2016, at the Holiday Inn off London’s Commercial Road – close to Wootton’s flat at the time.
And on at least one of the occasions Wootton paid the adult entertainer’s fee with The Sun’s money.
On 10 June 2016, Wootton sent an email from his work address – [email protected] – to the newspaper’s editorial clerk, registering the porn star as a “new payee” on its contributor payments system.
The email, which Byline Times has obtained, reads: “I need [the second entertainer] set up as a new payee please. He needs to put down for 1500 urgently on the Amber Heard splash [page one story, also on pages] 4/5 from last week. Thanks, Dan.”
Analysis of The Sun’s stories in the relevant time-frame suggests that the payment – which the entertainer confirms was not for information about Johnny Depp or Amber Heard – was in lieu of an article Wootton wrote about the Hollywood pair’s private lives.
This newspaper has also spoken to another man Wootton paid to make a secret film of an unwitting third party in 2012, this time at London’s Savoy hotel in a suite paid for by the then sponsors of the BAFTAs, the telecoms company Orange.
The man said he had initially dealt with Wootton’s alter ego Martin Branning and had made secret films for Branning for £250 a time, before being approached openly by Wootton and asked to meet another man whom he covertly filmed without consent.
He said: “It was on a Sunday, during the BAFTAs, while Dan was still at The Sun. I got a message from Wootton himself. He asked me to secretly record me [performing a specified sex act on a man who did not know he was being filmed] at a hotel room at The Savoy for money.”
Although the filming went ahead, in the event there was no sexual activity, as the pair instead got drunk on the room’s mini-bar.
The man said: “I was secretly recording, correct, but I didn’t [perform any sex acts], and we just drank in the hotel room… what [Wootton] asked me to do didn’t really happen, but he still asked me to video [the man] without his consent.”
The allegations in this article have been put to representatives of Dan Wootton and this newspaper has not received a response. Byline Times will update this article if it does.
While we have repeatedly asked representatives for Wootton to confirm or deny whether the presenter was, or is connected to, the online identity ‘Martin Branning’, it has not received a response. Wootton has said he denies any allegations of criminality.
News UK, publisher of The Sun, also did not respond to Byline Times’ questions. It has appointed legal firm Kingsley Napley to investigate the allegations made against Wootton.
Wootton’s current employers – MailOnline and GB News – have still not responded to any questions by this newspaper about the allegations. While Wootton’s twice-weekly MailOnline column has not appeared since Byline Times’ investigation was published, he is still appearing on GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight.
Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has written to Victoria Newton, editor of The Sun, so it can “set out what investigations are taking place” into its former employee Wootton.
Rosvanian wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 10:16 am I wonder how Skidmark Wootton's crowdfunding is going?It's here.
The lawyer said: “For the avoidance of further doubt, our client did not at any time contact current or former colleagues at the Sun with offers of money in return for sexually explicit images, he did not engage in inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, and he did not misuse News UK funds.”I thought they had to pay some people off because of his behaviour?
Youngian wrote: ↑Sun Jul 30, 2023 5:02 pm GBNews rolling out the financial sector big guns
Holy feck
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