Paedophile hunters snared a man who turned up to meet a 13-year-old girl armed with chocolates and fizzy pop.
Daniel John Eldridge, 21, spent four months chatting to who he believed was a teenage girl on WhatsApp.
But when he arrived, holding a Dairy Milk and a Coke, to meet the girl, he was confronted by undercover group Geordie Chasers.
The man travelled around 20 miles from his home in Meadowfield, County Durham, to Newcastle for the encounter.
Footage taken by the undercover group was passed on to the authorities.
Eldridge pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and arranging or facilitating the commission of a child under the sexual offences act 2003.
He was handed a 36-week jail sentence, suspended for 24 months, and given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for seven years, which bans him from contacting children online.
The Geordie Chasers said the sentence was far too lenient.
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During the 16-minute video, Eldridge struggles to speak as the group tell him he would have scarred the child for life.
At one point Eldridge can be heard saying: Ive lost everything.
He also said that his decision to meet the supposed 13-year-old was daft, to which one of the team replied: I think youre a little bit more than daft.
The man holding the camera asks if Eldridge knew the age of consent, to which he replied 18.
But screenshots of the conversation show he knew the girl he thought he was contacting was only 13.
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