Personal trainer jailed for blackmailing her ex-boyfriend for £10m with threats of telling stories of 'degrading sex acts'

Jennifer Mbazira demanded the man, who she met through a dating site and believed was a billionaire, pay her millions or else she would tell his business associates, friends and family he had physically and mentally abused her.

She even claimed he had used her as a ‘human toilet’ and told a trial the money was owed to her through a verbal agreement. But she was found guilty of blackmail.

Mbazira, a 50-year-old mother from London, remained defiant and claimed she would lodge an appeal as she was sentenced at Portsmouth Crown Court.

Orlando Gibbons, prosecuting, told the hearing Mbazira threatened to ‘trash’ the victim's reputation with his family and business associates.

He said: ‘She made a demand for £10m, with menaces, that unless she received a very substantial sum of money, she was going to send copies of her previous emails.

‘[These were] describing allegations of “degrading sexual activity” between the parties during the course of their relationship, thereby trashing the victim’s reputation among his family as well as his business and other associates.

‘[Mbazira] has conducted extensive online research into blackmail and had also contacted a number of law firms in relation to possible legal claims against the victim as part of her campaign to extort substantial sums of money, all factors, demonstrating a degree of planning.’

In a statement read to the court, the victim wrote: ‘Jennifer Mbazira set out to undermine my life, my work and happiness through a whole area of false allegations that she intended to make public unless I transferred her, under duress, huge sums of money.

‘Lives can be changed and ruined by this. This would have changed both my family life, my business life - it would have changed everything about my life and quite literally turned my life upside down.’

Mbazira asked for leniency because she was made homeless halfway through the trial, in which she defended herself, and was sleeping on the streets and at Heathrow airport.

But Judge William Ashworth called her attempts to file a lawsuit against her blackmail victim ‘ludicrous’ and her demand for £10m ‘ridiculous’ as he delivered the sentence.

Jailing her, he said: ‘The evidence against you was overwhelming.

‘He offered you £2,000 to sweeten what he understood to be a final break of all links. in fact, all the payment did was cause you to smell blood.

‘You persuaded yourself he was fantastically rich based on your internet research and decided to press him for as much as he could give you.

‘You contacted lawyers and tried to bring what was a ludicrous lawsuit against him... when that failed you resolved to calculated and cold blackmail.

‘He offered you the £20,000 you had demanded before. A total capitulation. But even this did not prove enough for you and, sensing weakness, you pressed your demand to the hilt and asked for £10m.’

The judge noted Mbazira had told the probation service about her ‘desperate childhood’ and claimed to have fled from the forces of Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin as one of 16 siblings and was the last of them to reach the UK, aged 15.

But Judge Ashworth said: ‘I find it more likely than not that some of the details are embellished.’

During the trial, jurors had heard how the couple first met on the Encounters dating website in October 2015 before eventually breaking up in February 2018 following an ‘on and off’ relationship.

In June 2018, Mbazira asked the businessman for £20,000. She claimed the man promised her money to start her own fashion business, and initially asked for this amount so she could start a business importing baskets from Morocco and selling them on eBay and Amazon.

When the businessman said he did not have that kind of money and did not think it was ‘sensible’ to be in a business relationship together he instead offered her £1,000 on the condition she didn't ask for money again.

But Mbazira said she this was a ‘demeaning, horrible, mean thing to say’ and texted him back ‘through a shaking fit’, accusing the businessman of being a ‘narcissist’ who had been ‘taking but not giving’ and using her home in Clapham, which she shared with her son, ‘as a bed and breakfast’ throughout their relationship.

She said she had Googled verbal contracts and ‘decided I was going to make a claim’.

Later that year, Mbazira sent a series of menacing emails to the businessman, threatening to 'press the button' and send details of their sex life and allegations of abuse to his children if he did not follow through on his ‘promise’ to fund her business.

On Christmas Eve 2018 she emailed again to say 'I'm going to send a copy of my last email to the company you represent and your children'.

She eventually demanded £10m from the man, convinced he was a 'billionaire entrepreneur', so she could buy a new home, start a business and put her son through university.

But he told her in emails: "I'm not a billionaire. I had a good career [but] I don't own the companies I work for. I’m not a self-made entrepreneur.

"There is a big difference between a director of a company (me) and the person who owns the company (not me).

The alleged victim, anonymous for legal reasons, told jurors: ‘To say I felt threatened was an understatement... I was really very, very worried and concerned.

‘I didn't have £10m to give her. I'm very comfortable, well off, but I don't have assets of £10m.

‘I only had one option, which was to go to the police.’

Mbazira was also handed a restraining order.