Imperial student blackmailed by security guard over girlfriend living in halls with him

A former security guard at Imperial College London’s Wilson Halls has been found guilty of blackmailing a Chinese medical student.

Dean Carder fraudulently claimed it was against the rules for the first year student to let his girlfriend stay at the halls and invented a £3,500 fine under false charges of a broken tenancy agreement. 

He told the student he could pay £2,400 backhand directly to him for him to turn a blind eye and received £700 before being arrested over blackmail, My London reports. 

The Imperial College London student secretly recorded the conversation, which was used as evidence to prosecute the security guard.

The student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, described the emotional impact of being blackmailed. 

He said: “I felt paranoid and unsafe. I could not trust any of the security team … It happened at my college accommodation.”

Carder, who had accrued gambling debts of over £12,000, knocked on the victim’s door and informed him he was under investigation. 

He proceeded to search through the couple’s belongings, before interrogating them both separately. 

Carder insisted the girlfriend had been staying with the student for six months, despite the girlfriend having only stayed at the halls for around two months. 

He told the first year student: “If you scratch my back, I will scratch yours”, and offered to arrange a back-channel payment, prompting the student to start recording the conversation. Carter offered a £2,400 payment in exchange for deleting CCTV footage of the couple and evidence of key card use. 

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He then took him to a cashpoint to give him £700, and threatened not to delete all the footage until the full amount was paid. 

After withdrawing this cash, the victim immediately reported Carder to the halls’ managers’ using the recordings. Carder was suspended by Diligence Security Solutions. He later quit his job before his arrest. 

Dean Carder has since been sentenced to two years in prison, convicted of a single count of blackmail. 

Judge David Tomlinson condemned Carder’s actions, paying little credit to Carder’s defence teams’ claims he had been motivated by his gambling debts and appeal to his previously good character. 

The judge said: “To transfer your woes onto an inexperienced overseas student is shameful. Send him down.”

The student’s prosecution also noted Carder had boasted of “helping” other students in the same way when blackmailing the victim, suggesting it might not be the first time he had blackmailed students on false charges. 

The student explained that not only was the crime “shocking”, leaving him “paranoid and unsafe”, but his loss of £700 had also left him unable to afford a deposit for his second year housing. 

The prosecution said that far from fulfilling his duty “to protect students”, Carder abused his position which made him “perfectly placed to commit this crime.”

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