A BUSINESSMAN from Capel Bangor fell into the hands of blackmailers as he arrived in a McDonald’s car park to meet a contact from a swingers’ website.

Robert Stacey, aged 58, dialled 999 to complain he was being threatened – and blurted out that he had arranged to meet an underage girl.

Stacey ended up being arrested himself.

But he was cleared of attempting to entice a child to engage in sexual activity and attempting to meet her after sexual grooming following a trial at Swansea Crown Court.

Stacey, who runs the Daisy Chain plant nursery, told the court he and his partner Deborah Fryer were swingers.

He said they had met 100 couples and individuals via the Fab Swingers website and had had sex with about 20 of them.

Stacey said he began swapping messages with someone who claimed to be a teenage girl and asked her if she wanted to lose her virginity to an older man.

She replied “yes, but I’m nervous” and he arranged to meet her in Sutton Coldfield.

But as soon as he parked his Mercedes estate, two men blocked him in with a white Transit van.

One got into his car and told him he had been set up and that he would get 10 years for trying to have sex with a child.

But he added: “Look, we can make this go away for money.”

Stacey refused to pay and called the police to say he was afraid.

“I have arranged to meet someone who is underage and they are trying to blackmail me,” he said.

The blackmailers left the car park.

But the following day police turned up at Stacey’s home at Tanrallt and took away a mobile phone and an iPad – and found dozens of sexual messages he had swapped with the “girl”.

In some he asked her to send him photographs of her naked and added: “How would you like to meet an older man in a hotel for the joys of sex?”

In one he asked her what she was interested in. She replied: “Naughty old men. You?” Stacey: “Naughty young girls.”

On being told she was 15 and still at school, Stacey wrote: “That’s a bit young. Illegal. Do you want to lose your virginity?”

Stacey said that by that stage he thought he was taking part in a “fantasy” conversation, which was not uncommon in the world of swingers.

The “girl,” he added, had given different ages and by the time he turned into the McDonald’s car park he had had no real idea who he might meet.

It could have turned out to be a man, or no-one at all, he said. But he had had no interest in meeting a schoolgirl.

And, he added, he and his partner had a understanding that there would not be sex during a first meeting, which he always abided by.

Stacey had always denied the charges and was found not guilty unanimously.