The blackmail injunction that was ready before the blackmailers came back
Case summary
The claimant, known in the proceedings only as RXE, is a British businessman and not a public figure. In February 2026, travelling in the United States and going through a difficult period, he believed he was talking to a woman online. The conversation became sexual and images were exchanged. The two never met; the whole relationship lived in messages.
Then the demands started. The people behind the profile appeared to know about his family, his personal life and his business. They had run his photographs through facial recognition software and worked out who he was, and they threatened to send the material to his wife, to his business contacts and to the wider public unless he paid. Between March and June 2026 he did pay, more than $70,000 and a further £30,000, each transfer made in the hope that it would be the last. It never was. Every payment told the people on the other end two things: that he could pay, and that he was frightened enough to.
He instructed me on 24 June 2026. By then he had paid and hoped it was over. My advice was not what he expected. Rather than write to anyone, we would prepare the whole court application, the witness statement, the exhibits, the draft order and the skeleton argument, and then we would wait. In my experience a blackmailer who has been paid does not go away; he comes back. When he did, we would already be at the court door.
He came back on 29 June, with a fresh demand for £50,000 and an explicit threat that the images would be sent if it was not paid. Because the work was done, the application went before the court the next day.
What the court decided
On the evening of 30 June 2026 Mrs Justice Ellenbogen, sitting as the urgent applications judge of the King’s Bench Division, heard the application without notice to the defendants. She accepted that giving them notice would have risked defeating the order, since the threat was of imminent publication and of harm to the claimant if he took action, which is the test in section 12(2) of the Human Rights Act 1998. She considered the claim as one for misuse of private information and was satisfied that the material was private and sexual, that the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, and that he was likely to establish at trial that publication should not be allowed. She noted, as the authorities do, that the protection of blackmail victims is an interest which can override the usual principle of open justice, and that a blackmailer’s right to free speech is very weak.
The order she made is on the judiciary’s website. It anonymised the claimant under section 6 of the Human Rights Act and CPR 39.2, named the defendants as Daniel Ryan, Kane Samms, Liam Gill and persons unknown, and forbade them from publishing or disclosing the material, from identifying the claimant and from contacting him, his family or anyone associated with him. It went further than a bare gagging order. Within 24 hours of service the defendants had to disclose to my firm the identity and contact details of whoever had corresponded with the claimant through the Telegram account and the WhatsApp numbers used for the threats, and of whoever had received his money; they had seven days to confirm that disclosure in a witness statement with a statement of truth and to deliver up everything they held. The judge gave permission to serve the order through the very channels the gang had used, imposed a reporting restriction under section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 until the return date, and fixed that return date for the same week, Friday 3 July at 2pm.
Case outcome
The order was served on 1 July. The injunction was continued at the return date on 3 July 2026, and the court’s order was published on the judiciary’s website with the defendants’ names on it and the claimant’s name nowhere. The threatened disclosure never happened. My client remains anonymous and protected; the men named in the order do not have that protection, and in August 2026 the Daily Mail reported on the racket behind this case and its sequel, HSX v Daniel Ryan and others, in which the same gang targeted a New York businessman and a judge sat on a Saturday to stop them. That story, and the public judgment that followed it, are in The Seeking honey trap: how the High Court named a sextortion gang and kept its victims anonymous.
The order is interim. It was made without notice, on the claimant’s evidence, and continued with no defendant present. It is not a finding of fact against any of the men named in it, and the allegations against each of them would be tested at trial. Mr Samms has denied any involvement.
Lawyers’ thoughts about the case
Two lessons, and I give both to every client who rings in this position. The first is that paying rarely ends it. My client paid six figures over four months and the demands kept coming; the injunction is what stopped them. The second is that preparation is speed. An injunction granted within hours of a demand makes a good headline, but the work that made it possible was done quietly in the days before, so that when the blackmailers made their next move the application was already drafted, the evidence already exhibited, and all the court had to do was read it. A without notice application carries a duty of full and frank disclosure, which means the judge has to be shown the whole picture, including anything that could be said against the applicant. That cannot be done well in a panic. It can be done well in five days, and then held ready.
If you are being blackmailed by someone you met online, you do not need to know who they are to stop them, you do not need to have sent anything explicit, and you do not need to pay again. Blackmail is a crime, and the civil courts will restrain it by injunction within days when the application is properly prepared.
Learn more about the case
- The order of Ellenbogen J, 30 June 2026, on the judiciary website: https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/rxe-v-daniel-ryan-and-others-anonymity-order-and-injunction/
- Cohen Davis case report, RXE v Ryan and others: https://internetlawcentre.co.uk/rxe-v-ryan
- The second case against the same gang, HSX v Daniel Ryan and others [2026] EWHC 1985 (KB): https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026/1985
- Practice Guidance on interim non-disclosure orders (Master of the Rolls, 2011): https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Guidance/practice-guidance-civil-non-disclosure-orders-july2011.pdf
The claimant is anonymised by order of the High Court. The order is interim and the allegations against the named defendants have not been tried. Mr Samms denies any involvement.