A TEENAGER from York has been jailed after he lured unwitting children to bogus photoshoots, then sexually assaulted them.

Adam Barraclough, 19, previously hit the headlines when he conned aviation bosses into thinking he was an industry tycoon, in a scam likened to the plot of hit film Catch Me If You Can.

Barraclough, of Earswick Close, Earswick, had been commiting fraud since he was 12, and a judge has now jailed him for three years and ten months, warning that he is and will remain a sexual danger to other people.

Barraclough admitted setting up the fake modelling company Jungle International and using it and two other companies, plus a string of aliases, to sexually assault girls under the pretence of taking body measurements during photo shoots.

Manchester Crown Court heard police were also investigating allegations that he sexually assaulted two fellow inmates in the showers of a young offenders’ institition. Barraclough denies those allegations.

Prosecuting, Neil Usher said Barraclough used different names as he portrayed Jungle International as a modelling agency with major international clients.

He contacted modelling agencies who sent dozens of children to his fake photo shoots in Manchester, London and Bolton. He claimed children were safe with him because he was homosexual.

He rented accommodation in Oxford Street, London, and elsewhere, and hired photographers to support his lies but when he failed to pay his bills, two photographers called in police.

One of the fake names was Dominic Evans, similar to one he used when, still under 18, he almost persuaded air executives he was setting up his own airline.

He has not been charged in relation to that, but was given a supervision order for theft for a con committed in Telford, Shropshire, when he was 12. On that occasion, he got a close relative of a road crash victim to hand him money that she wanted to give to an air ambulance charity.

Judge Martin Steiger said Barraclough displayed “considerable ability and talent” in his latest crimes and said he demonstrated what a doctor had called “a Walter Mitty lifestyle”.

He said Barraclough’s “only rational motive” could have been to touch the young girls and said there was “no doubt whatsoever” that he would continue to represent a significant sexual risk.

He jailed Barraclough for ten months, on top of a three-year sentence imposed last July for sexual offences against two girls aged seven and eight in North Yorkshire. The earlier case could not be reported until now for legal reasons.

Barraclough pleaded guilty to two charges of defrauding photographers out of pay, two of sexually assaulting girls aged 15 and 16 by measuring parts of their body, four of taking indecent photographs of one of the North Yorkshire girls, three of taking indecent photos of his then girlfriend with her consent and four of sexual activity with young children.

He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for ten years, banned from being a company director for four, and made subject to a sexual offences prevention order indefinitely.

For Barraclough, Glenn Parsons said the sexual assaults were not as serious as some and did not distress the children involved. The oldest girl spent a weekend with Barraclough in London, sleeping in the same bed when nothing happened to her. He said his client regretted his crimes and needed to grow up.

The airline con made headlines around the country in 2009, after Barraclough, then 17, convinced aviation bosses he was a tycoon.

He created fictitious fellow executives of his “airline” and set up fake websites before he was stopped by police while trying to board a plane in Southend.

His exploits drew parallels with those of Frank Abagnale Jr, who convinced Pan Am that he was a pilot while still a teenager, and whose exploits featured in the Leonardo Di Caprio film Catch Me If You Can.