A 28-year-old man has been jailed for six years for blackmailing two people he met on a dating website. Sam Shepherd was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court on Thursday, April 15 after admitting two charges of blackmail relating to victims in South Gloucestershire and Bristol. Shepherd, of Kent Street, Portsmouth, would befriend his victims on a dating website and then threaten to release intimate details about them to their friends and family. He arranged to meet the victims and demanded they hand over large sums of money. In a victim impact statement read to the court, one of the victims said: “It’s been three months since the blackmail began, but it has felt like an incredibly long, tortuous and traumatic time. It truly has felt like my life has stood still and that I have been paralysed as the life I loved has fallen apart around me.