Hoaxer jailed for fake package to PM

Theresa May… hoax package adressed to her at 10, Downing Street by Doyle. Picture: Google and (inset) Home Office

Christopher Doyle was tracked down after trying to send a fake ‘noxious’ package to Downing Street in 2018 which was intercepted by sharp-eyed staff at the Royal Mail’s east London sorting office.

Explosives experts from Scotland Yard who arrived at the sorting office to analyse the powder identified it as harmless citric acid.

Detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command searched 54-year-old Doyle’s home at Widnes in Cheshire where they discovered the indecent images on his computer.

Doyle denied the hoax, but admitted in court to making the indecent images.

He received 34 months yesterday, September 3, when he was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after being convicted there for the hoax on August 14.

The hoax got him 30 months under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism and Security Act and four months for making and possessing the indecent images under the 1978 Protection of Children and the 1988 Criminal Justice acts. He has also been put on the Sex Offenders register and been given a Sexual Harm Prevention order for seven years.

“We deal robustly with such incidents,” Alexis Boon from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command said after Doyle’s sentencing. “The Met treats extremely seriously hoaxes and any attempts to make MPs and elected officials fear for their safety.”

Scotland Yard set up a team dealing with threatening or intimidating MPs after the murder in 2016 of MP Jo Cox, who lived with her young family on a houseboat at Hermitage Pier in Wapping, when she was stabbed in her Yorkshire constituency during the Brexit referendum campaign.