A man convicted of a $1,200 blackmail scheme against a senior was yesterday sentenced to two years behind bars.

Janico Burrows, 29, was found guilty this year of making unwarranted demands with menace through a scheme with Jahmeco Blakeney.

Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe told the court that the offence was serious and senior citizens like the victim needed to be protected from all forms of abuse.

However, he said that Burrows appeared to show genuine remorse for his actions and had stayed on the straight and narrow since the incident in 2020.

“I do see some scope for part of the sentence being suspended due to the defendant’s meritorious conduct after the commitment of this offence,” he said.

“Blakeney was clearly the mastermind behind this conspiracy of blackmail. The defendant was just a willing pawn.”

While Blakeney pleaded guilty to the blackmail scheme and was sentenced to 18 years behind bars, Burrows had denied the offence, leading to a full trial in the Supreme Court.

During his trial, a jury heard that Burrows worked with Blakeney to steal from Paulette Godfrey over the course of four days in June 2020.

Ms Godfrey told the court that she received a phone call on June 2 from a private number and heard a man on the other end attempting to disguise his voice.

She said that the man told her that her son owed him and others money and threatened to “put my son in a plastic bag and throw him on my lawn”.

She agreed to pay the blackmailers $1,200 in instalments over the next three days and met a person at St Anne’s Church in Southampton each day to give them the cash.

Ms Godfrey said that she could not see the man’s face because it was obscured by a mask, which was mandatory at the time, but added that she could make out Burrows’s eyes and mannerisms.

She said that the calls continued after she paid the $1,200, and that the caller became frustrated after she refused to give an additional $200 and forgot to conceal his voice.

Ms Godfrey said that she recognised the man as Blakeney, a friend of her son’s, and called the police.

During trial, Burrows admitted taking cash from the senior, but he insisted that he had no idea she was being pressured to give the money.

He explained that Blakeney told him that she owed him money and that he later agreed to collect the money because he did not want his aunt, Blakeney’s former foster mother, to worry about Blakeney.

He acknowledged that his working hours and salary had been reduced because of the pandemic, but denied the prosecutor’s suggestion that he conspired with Blakeney to blackmail Ms Godfrey because he was struggling financially.

Burrows said that he called Ms Godfrey from his phone and met her without incident over the course of three days.

He added that he never knew that Blakeney had menaced the senior and insisted that he would not have helped if he had known.

A jury, however, found him guilty of the offence by a unanimous verdict after 3½ hours of deliberation.

At a sentencing hearing yesterday, Marc Daniels, counsel for Burrows, suggested that a suspended sentence should be considered given the circumstances of the case.

Mr Daniels argued that while Blakeney served as the leader in the plot and made the threatening demands, Burrows acted only as a “runner” to collect the money.

He added that while Blakeney had a history of criminal offences, Burrows had a clean record and a social inquiry report found he was unlikely to commit further offences.

Burrows told the court: “I want to say I’m sorry to Ms Godfrey for the situation. I didn’t mean to cause any harm to her.”

He went on to apologise to his family for the shame he had caused them, adding: “I have realised I have made a mistake.

“I wish I could go back and change it but I just have to pay the consequences of my actions.”

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