Gay adult film star-turned-spy who posed as IS supporter sentenced
A former gay porn actor and German spy has been sentenced for attempting to share state secrets while pretending to be a jihadist online.
The 52-year-old, named as Roque M, was arrested last November in what initially appeared to be a case of an Islamist mole at work in Germany’s domestic spy agency.
Prosecutors dropped most charges in July, however, finding no evidence of an attack plot or ties to Islamist groups.
M claimed he had no intentions of meeting with Jihadists, but was instead taking the action because he was bored.
“I never met with any Islamists. I would never do that. The whole thing was like a game,” he told the court.
He claimed infiltrating the groups was an “escape from reality” at weekends.
M was eventually caught when he offered to share classified information about BfV operations with someone who turned out to be a colleague working undercover.
He’s now been given a one year suspended sentence.
German intelligence officials were prowling a digital hangout popular with Islamists when they discovered the surprising user last year.
The man was claiming to himself be a German spy and offering to help others infiltrate Germany’s primary intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
German authorities lured the man into a private chat, where he gave out many private details about the agency in a bid to help other extremists overcome it.
The man was arrested after the agency said he was accused of making Islamist declarations online and threats to blow up the agency’s HQ in Cologne.
Authorities searched the internet for the man’s alias in a bid to track down all the classified info he’d shared and who with.
What they didn’t expect was to discover he had a past life acting in gay adult films.
He had used the alias as a screen name for his man on man action as recently as 2011.
The revelations have caused an uproar in Germany, with people asking how the agency’s vetting could have failed to notice his porn past.
The agency had interviewed former colleagues and employers of the man in their vetting process, but none had mentioned being aware of his acting in adult films.
