These are the latest cases and convictions from Blackpool Magistrates' Court - Monday, December 23, 2019

Stephen Reed, 62, harassment

A man bombarded two former business associates with Facebook messages over a £30,000 debt he claimed they owed him The postings by 62-year-old Stephen Reed, who has the nickname”Afroman”, amounted to what prosecutor Carl Gaffney told a court was “corrosive Chinese water torture”.

Reed of Common Edge Road,Blackpool admitted sending messages which caused annoyance and needless anxiety to two former Blackpool car dealers John Barnett and Brian Middlemass.

District Judge Jane Goodwin fined Reed £120 and ordered him to pay £115 costs.

She made him the subject of an 18 month restraining order which forbids him from contacting the two men named in her order and their wives apart from using solicitors.

The judge told him: ““This behaviour has been born out of a long standing dispute. It was persistent behaviour which caused anxiety at the very least.”

She dismissed a second charge which Reed faced which alleged he had sent his victims menacing and indecent messages.

Reed’s lawyer John McLaren said the dispute had lingered for 30 years. It involved a debt of £30,000 Reed said was owed to him by the duo as commission over the sale of some land.

Mr McLaren said:”My client has gone through a lot recently.He suffered an armed robbery,his business folded and his marriage broke up. Also his son died.

“He remains an undischarged bankrupt and thought that by chasing this debt which he has done for many years he could go some way towards satisfying his trustee in bankruptcy and therefore his creditors.”

Scott Faulkner, 39, failing to comply with a Criminal Behaviour Order

A beggar breached a court order for the sixth time when he asked a plainclothes community police officer if he could give him some money for a coffee.

Scott Faulkner, unemployed, aged 39, of Oldbury Place, Anchorsholme, pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO).

He was sentenced to a 12 months community order with up to 20 days rehabilitation to be supervised by the probation service, fined £10 and ordered to pay £90 victims’ surcharge.

Prosecutor, Pam Smith, said Faulkner was put on a CBO in January this year, until 2022, which banned him from asking anyone he did not know for money or goods. On October 24, a plainclothes community police officer and a colleague were on Blackpool’s South Promenade when Faulkner asked the officer if he had money for a coffee and was told no.

The officers then saw Faulkner approaching members of the public outside McDonalds.

He had five previous convictions for breaching a CBO.

Hugh Pond, defending, said his client had not been persistently or aggressively begging,

Faulkner, who had had a drug problem since his mother died four years ago and who was working with rehabilitation specialists to try and rid himself of the habit, had apologised immediately at the police station.

James Fox, 35, drunk and disorderly and breach of a conditional discharge

A drunken man being given a lift home by police tried to open the door of the police car as it was moving.

James Fox, 35, of Saville Road, South Shore, pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly and breaching a conditional discharge imposed for a similar offence.

He was fined £40 with £85 costs and ordered to pay £32 victims’ surcharge.

Prosecutor, Pam Smith, said police got a report Fox was walking in the middle of the road, on November 28, about 1am, and officers saw him swaying there as a taxi had to drive around him.

Police offered to drive him home but he would not disclose his address and they agreed to take him to McDonalds so he could sober up.

During the journey he repeatedly fell asleep and then tried to open the police car door.

Officers dropped him off and on Bank Hey Street saw him approach a taxi and call the driver a rat.

He then got in the cab despite the driver refusing to take him. At the time of the offence he was on post prison sentence supervision.

Fox apologised, said it was a blip and that he was progressing working with alcohol rehabilitation experts.