A woman who used a voice-changing app to sound like a man during a “sophisticated” harassment campaign has been jailed for more than two years.
Adele Rennie posed as a pharmacist when she matched with her victim on the dating platform Tinder in August 2023.
It is the third conviction for the same offence for the 33-year-old woman after she was jailed in 2017, and again two years later, for impersonating men to deceive women.
The former nurse was jailed for 28 months at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court yesterday after admitting similar charges at a hearing in July.
Rennie, from Kilmarnock, will also be under supervision for 12 months after her release, banned from contacting or approaching her victim for five years and placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years after pleading guilty to four charges.
Adele Rennie used a voice-changing app to sound like a man in her ‘sophisticated’ harassment campaign
The court heard his elaborate harassment campaign involved using a voice-changing device to sound like a man while pretending to be a pharmacist to pick up his victim on the dating app, Tinder, in August 2023.
The pair exchanged numbers and she then had flowers delivered to the address of her victim, who had arranged to meet the “man.”
But when Rennie cancelled the meeting at the last minute, the woman realised the Tinder account was a “scam profile” created to trick victims.
However, days later she received a voice note from someone calling herself ‘Cheryl’ who claimed to be a friend of the man and urged her “not to give up on him.”
She later received calls from him but felt that the voice had been altered.
On September 5, the victim received an unwanted explicit image from Rennie, who claimed he had not meant anything by it and that he could not delete it.
A week later, the woman received a message from Rennie containing a photograph taken outside the complainant’s workplace.
Prosecutors said the following month, the defendant sent her victim a screenshot from Google Maps showing someone outside her home.
The woman then received a photograph of her street taken through a car window.
Less than a week later, Rennie sent the victim a ticket to a concert in London, but she decided she did not want to go. Rennie asked her to send the ticket via Ticketmaster to an email address.
A witness showed the woman photographs of the concert in which Rennie was seen present. She then contacted the police, who searched Rennie’s home on 14 November 2023.
A mobile phone was examined and found to contain an email address containing the man’s name and internet searches for the victim.
Police also found a photograph that matched the fake male profile and recovered several bank cards that had not been declared in accordance with Rennie’s sex offender notification requirement.
Sheriff Nicola Patrick told him: ‘You yourself admitted that you deliberately sought out your victim and engaged in conduct designed to cause her distress.
‘Your actions involved a significant degree of premeditation, deceit and manipulation and it is clear from the victim impact statement that they have had such a profound effect on her that she has had to seek support and assistance to deal with the trauma you have caused her.’
He added that there was no alternative to a prison sentence and “to protect the public from serious harm” on his release, the sheriff imposed a supervised release order.
Speaking after the hearing, David Bernard, prosecuting for North Strathclyde, said: “Adele Rennie carried out a sophisticated campaign of harassment despite being subject to strict reporting requirements as a registered sex offender.”
We recognize that the trauma experienced by victims of bullying can be profound and distressing.
‘We hope this sentence provides some comfort to those affected by Rennie’s disturbing and manipulative behaviour.’
Rennie has previously targeted former Miss Scotland finalist Abbie Draper, whom he met while caring for the beauty contestant’s dying grandfather at Crosshouse Hospital.
He began attacking her with fake messages and calls using the voice-changing app while they were talking, pretending to be a doctor.
But Ms Draper began to suspect that she had been contacted suddenly by a doctor she did not know.
The woman managed to link the fake Facebook account involved to Rennie’s phone number, which exposed the hoax. Draper was not harassed and did not receive any images. But she said other victims reached out to her after she shared her story.
Speaking to the BBC after the July hearing, he said: “This is not just catfishing, it is much more than that.
“This shows that the police and the judicial system take it very seriously now, whether you are a woman or a man, when you receive a prison sentence.”