A VIGILANTE group exposed a Nigerian care assistant as a paedophile when he went on a dating website and tried to groom a 14-year-old girl for sex, a court heard.

For the girl did not exist – she had been invented by the Hereford anti paedophile group 'H-Division' to ensnare Christopher Ogundowoie, 27, Gloucester crown court was told.

The profile of the teenager, 'Chloe May', had been created by David Poole and Kirsty Cleary of 'H-Division' and it was them giving the responses when Ogundowoie chatted to her and asked her to travel from her Hereford home to Gloucester to meet him for sex, said prosecutor Janine Wood.

He went to Gloucester Railway station to meet her but saw a police car parked outside and fled, fearing he had been set up - which he had, Mrs Wood said.

Ogundowoie, of no fixed address, who was living in Gloucester at the time and working for a care agency, admitted attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence.

He also admitted possessing a fake Nigerian passport with intent to put it to improper use.

Judge Jamie Tabor QC jailed him for a total of 20 months and told him he faces deportation to Nigeria at the end of his sentence.

Mrs Wood said Ogundowoie went onto the adult dating website Plenty of Fish and saw 'Chloe-May's' profile and photograph. It claimed she was nineteen.

He chatted to 'her' for four hours and then got her phone number to continue their conversation.

She then told him she was only 14 but he continued to chat to her, asking her to come to Gloucester and not to tell anyone.

He was arrested after police traced him through his phone number and the agency he worked for.

When arrested police realised that his passport was a fake. He was in fact an 'overstayer' whose original visa to enter the UK had run out.

Sarah Jenkins, defending, said it was important to note that he had not gone seeking under age girls. He had gone onto a legal and widely used adult dating site and thought the girl he was talking to was 19.

The fake girl had then given him 'real encouragement of a sexual nature' and he was drawn into it because he was lonely, she said.

Ogundowoie had no previous convictions and had been working in a responsible job without any suggestion of inappropriate behaviour, she added.

He had come to the UK in 2014 after losing both his parents and his brother, who had been shot, she said. Because of their deaths he was unable to continue an architecture course in Nigeria so he sold all the family possessions to travel here to make a new start.

Jailing him, Judge Jamie Tabor QC said "You should have pressed the exit button the moment you were told she was only 14." He placed Ogundowoie on the sex offender register for 10 years.