A Dunedin woman has been found guilty of blackmailing a fellow boarding-house resident.
The jury returned the unanimous verdict at the Dunedin District Court trial of Olivia Louise Fusco (21) after less than two hours' deliberation yesterday.
She was acquitted on a charge of indecent assault, the jury rejecting the allegation she brushed the victim's crotch with her hand.
Fusco claimed it had been her boyfriend - Nicholas Scott Kerr (29), who pleaded guilty in November to blackmail and was jailed for 11 months - who was solely responsible for extorting $400 from the victim.
But the jury rejected her claims and Judge Michael Crosbie said he understood why they had reached the verdicts they did.
The victim told the court on Monday he got back to the Maryhill boarding house after midnight on April 28 following a shift at work.
While in the communal kitchen, he briefly saw Fusco and Kerr before Fusco returned to the room alone.
As Fusco was loading food into the oven, the victim said, her nightgown opened to show she had nothing beneath it.
After quizzing her about it, he went back to his room but she knocked on his door and led him back to the kitchen.
Fusco sat on a counter and after propositioning the man, exposed her bare thigh.
The man said he stepped back and denied her advances.
''I thought that she was drunk . . . this is not the right thing to do,'' he told the jury.
Kerr then went to the man's room and the three of them talked, the victim said.
Before that, at 2.13am, he got a Facebook message from Kerr's account saying: ''Come to the kitchen. Bring money.''
Further messages came from Fusco's account but she said it was her then partner who had sent them.
The messages contained threats, references to money, and to the victim being a ''free man'', Crown prosecutor Catherine Ure said in her closing address yesterday.
''There was a clear intention,'' she said.
''[Fusco] knew exactly what was going on and that's what the independent evidence in this case tells you.''
Ms Ure said the defendant's evidence shifted during the time she was in the witness box, whereas the victim's version of events - especially when cross-referenced with the Facebook messages - was more plausible.
The man gave Kerr and Fusco $400 but, crucially, took photos of the notes' serial numbers before handing them over.
Later that evening, after confirmation a video of the kitchen incident had been deleted, he contacted police.
Officers found some of the cash in Kerr's wallet, the court heard.
Fusco claimed she had no part in the blackmail and that it had been the victim who had groped her in the kitchen rather than vice-versa.
She will be sentenced in March and will apply for bail today.
