RXE v Ryan and others, KB-2026-002349: the blackmail injunction that was ready before the blackmailers came back
On the evening of 30 June 2026, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen, sitting as the urgent applications judge of the King's Bench Division, granted our client an emergency injunction and an anonymity order against three named men and persons unknown who had been blackmailing him for months. The order was granted within hours of the blackmailers renewing their demands, because we had prepared the entire application in advance and held it ready. The court's order is published on the judiciary website: RXE v Daniel Ryan and others (anonymity order and injunction).
How the blackmail started
Our client is a UK national and not a public figure. In February 2026, while travelling and going through a difficult period in his life, he was in the United States and believed he was talking to a woman online. The conversation became sexual and images were exchanged. There was never a meeting; the whole relationship existed in messages.
Then the demands began. The people behind the profile appeared to know about his family, his personal life and his business, and had used facial recognition software to identify him. They threatened to send the material to his wife, to his business contacts and to the wider public. Between March and June the demands escalated, and out of fear he paid: more than US$70,000 and £30,000 in total, each payment made in the hope that it would be the last. It never was.
The advice that made the difference: prepare, and wait
When our client instructed us on 24 June 2026, he had already paid and hoped the matter was over. Our advice was different from what he expected: prepare the full court application now, just in case, and wait. In our experience, paying a blackmailer rarely ends the matter, and the sensible course is to have the application ready for the moment they come back.
They came back on 29 June, with a fresh demand for £50,000 and an explicit threat that the images would be sent if he did not pay. Because the work had already been done, the application went before the court the following day, and by that evening our client had his injunction. A complicated without notice application moved that fast for one reason only: it was ready before it was needed.
What the court decided
The hearing took place in public on the evening of 30 June 2026, with our client anonymised as "RXE". The judge accepted that prior notice to the blackmailers would have risked defeating the application, and considered the claim under the law of misuse of private information, applying section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which requires the court to be satisfied that a claimant is likely to establish at trial that publication should not be allowed.
The judge was satisfied that the threatened material was private and sexual in nature, that our client had a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, and that the defendants had no right to publish it. She noted, as the authorities recognise, that the protection of the victims of blackmail is an important interest which can override the usual principle of open justice, and that the free-speech rights of a blackmailer are very weak. She granted the interim non-disclosure order and the anonymity order, gave permission for service on the named defendants through the channels connected to them, and fixed a return date for the same week.
The outcome, on the public record
The injunction was continued at the return date on 3 July 2026. The court's order was published on the judiciary website on 2 July 2026, naming the defendants: Daniel Ryan, Kane Samms, Liam Gill and persons unknown. Our client remains anonymous, protected by the order, and the threatened disclosure never happened.
Lawyers' thoughts about the case
Two things, and we tell both to every client in this position. First, paying rarely ends it. Our client paid six figures across four months and the demands kept coming; the injunction is what stopped them. Second, preparation is speed. The overnight injunction headlines well, but the real work happened in the days before, quietly, so that when the blackmailers made their next move the application was already drafted, the evidence already exhibited, and the court could act within hours.
If you are being blackmailed by someone you met online, the same protection is available to you. Our UK blackmail lawyers can act for you the same day, and you can read about internet blackmail and sextortion and how to stop it, emergency injunctions and our other blackmail injunction cases, including the case of XLD v KZL.
