A Dunedin honey-trap blackmailer is back behind bars after just two months on parole.
Andy Junior Halliday, 30, was released from the Otago Corrections Facility on June 18 with almost a year remaining on his near-three-year jail sentence.
The Parole Board heard there had been a "huge improvement" in the prisoner’s behaviour since instances of drug use earlier in the year.
Halliday was described as "highly motivated" to end residential rehabilitation.
But yesterday the Dunedin District Court heard he had absconded from the programme over the weekend — allegedly breaching his nightly curfew and residence conditions — and had ultimately handed himself in to police.
He was charged with breaching parole but that charge would be withdrawn if the board granted a recall order.
In that eventuality, Halliday would continue serving his sentence.
In 2021, a woman calling herself "Audrey" — Halliday’s partner — began communicating with a Dunedin pensioner through a dating website. The married man would give her cash as she teased him with the possibility of intimate liaisons.
But the swindle began to sour when the victim became frustrated and started to withdraw.
With the threat of the money drying up, Halliday entered the frame and the contact took on a more menacing tone.
While the victim was on the phone to Audrey, the defendant introduced himself and requested money to help them with a move to Christchurch.
The man then obliged, but it only heightened Halliday’s audacity.
A couple of days later he demanded $2000 from the pensioner — otherwise he would visit him at home to chat with his wife, he said.
Halliday told the victim Audrey had destroyed his cannabis crop, that he was a gang prospect and his brother was the boss of a prominent motorcycle gang.
If the victim did not cough up another $2000, gang members would steal a vehicle from outside his home, the defendant claimed.
When Halliday requested more money and told the victim he had been to his house, the man called police.
Halliday was scheduled to appear in court again next month.
It is understood the Parole Board will have made its decision on recall by then.
His prison term ends in May next year
