A perverted pensioner who sent sexually explicit messages to two ‘teenage’ girls was arrested after he was confronted by a team of online paedophile hunters.

David Dunn sent the decoy pictures of himself without a top on and asked the 13-year-old girls to send him pictures of themselves in return.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the 74-year-old befriended the two girls on Facebook before persuading them to move to WhatsApp to continue their sexual conversations.

Sam Faulks, prosecuting, said the defendant was fully aware that the two people he was messaging were only 13 but what he didn’t realise was that they were actually decoys.

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The barrister read out the contents of some of the explicit messages as he outlined the charges that the pensioner was facing.

He told the judge how Dunn sent sexually laden messages between October and December last year before he was eventually confronted about his deviant behaviour and arrested.

Dunn, of Church Street, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, between late October and early December last year.

Stephen Constantine, mitigating, said his client had been left ashamed and embarrassed by his behaviour despite telling probation officers he had no sexual interest in the girls.

He added: “In his life, hitherto, he was a hard-working man. He accepts he has let his wife and the rest of his family down.

“The local community has not reacted well and he has had to move out of the family home. Such punishment has rained down on him for many different areas of his life.”

Judge Jonathan Carroll rejected the defendant’s claim that the messages were not sexually motivated before sentencing him to eight months in custody suspended for two years.

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He said: “These two children did not exist - they were the creations of a vigilante group. The created the created the profiles of two 13-year-old girls and they allowed them to be there to create the opportunity for someone like you to make contact with them.

“At all relevant times, your understanding was you were talking to 13-year-old girls and had no reason to suspect they were not really children.”

Dunn was ordered to attend 35 rehabilitation activity requirement days and carry out 120 hours of unpaid work.

He was also made subject of a ten-year sexual harm prevention order and told to sign on the sex offenders’ register for the same period of time.