When the Internet Turns on You: Two High Court Judgments on Fake News and Blackmail

On 29 July 2026 Mr Justice Fordham handed down two judgments in the King's Bench Division. One compensated a businessman defamed by a website dressed up as a newspaper. The other protected a man being blackmailed with intimate images by someone he had met on a dating site. The wrongs were different, but the question underneath them was the same: what can an English court actually do when the attack arrives through a screen, from people who hide their names and ignore the rules? The answer, on the evidence of these two cases, is a good deal more than most people imagine, and rather faster.

A newspaper that was nothing of the sort

In October 2024 a website calling itself The London Post published an article alleging that Ovik Mktrchyan, a businessman, headed a corruption network embezzling Uzbek state funds. The site had the look of journalism. The court heard that the reality was otherwise: it falsely claimed to be regulated by IPSO, its ownership was hidden behind a domain privacy service, the article carried no genuine byline, and established publications had already questioned it as part of a coordinated disinformation operation of the kind now labelled pink slime journalism.

The publishers ignored the proceedings entirely, and judgment in default was entered in February 2026. What remained was for the court to decide what the claim was worth, and in Mktrchyan v 2Trom Media Group Ltd [2026] EWHC 1923 (KB) Fordham J answered emphatically. Serious harm under section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 was established: the article had reached thousands of readers in this jurisdiction, and banks had withdrawn services from the claimant's companies in its wake. The award was £105,000 in general and aggravated damages. An injunction required the article's removal and restrained repetition of the allegations. Under section 12 of the Defamation Act 2013 the site was ordered to publish a summary of the judgment on its own homepage and keep it there for twelve months, so that the correction sits where the libel sat. And the defendants' total refusal to engage was answered with indemnity costs of £117,663.38. Ignoring English proceedings, in short, does not make them go away. It makes them more expensive.

The blackmailer who met the duty judge

The second case, HSX v Ryan and others [2026] EWHC 1985 (KB), shows the court working at a very different tempo. The claimant, a businessman, had exchanged messages and intimate images with someone he believed to be a young woman on a dating website. The correspondence then turned. The people behind the profile demanded money to delete the material, and they knew personal details about him and his family. He paid £39,000. The demands resumed at £100,000, accompanied by threats to publish the images and to spread wholly false and vile allegations against him, with a date fixed for disclosure.

He went to court instead, and the court moved at the speed the threat required. An urgent interim non disclosure order was granted before the threatened date, and Fordham J continued it on 29 July. The order restrained publication of the material, granted the claimant anonymity (which is why he appears only as HSX), required the defendants to provide information about who they actually are, and permitted service by email, WhatsApp and Telegram, so that the wrongdoers could be reached in the very channels they had used. Applying section 12(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the threshold in Cream Holdings, the judge held that the claimant was likely to establish at trial that publication should not be allowed, observing that a blackmailer cannot claim any significant Article 10 rights to freedom of expression. Free speech protects journalism, criticism and debate. It does not protect a ransom note.

What the two judgments teach

By a neat coincidence each case turned partly on a provision numbered section 12, one in the Defamation Act 2013 and one in the Human Rights Act 1998, and together they illustrate the breadth of the court's toolkit. Damages can be substantial, and aggravated where the wrongdoer's conduct makes the injury worse. Injunctions can both remove what has been published and forbid its repetition. A publisher can be made to display the court's conclusion on its own front page. Costs can be awarded on the indemnity basis against those who treat the process with contempt. Anonymity protects the victim rather than the wrongdoer. Identity disclosure orders and service through messaging apps mean that hiding behind a false profile or an offshore shell is an obstacle, not an immunity.

There are honest limits. A money judgment against an anonymous or absent defendant can be difficult to enforce, and nothing in either case makes the internet forget quickly. But both judgments reward the same instincts: act early, keep everything, and pay nothing. The claimant in HSX who stopped paying and started litigating obtained, within days, an order that changed his position entirely. The businessman who confronted a fake newspaper obtained compensation, a forced correction and his costs. The machinery exists, it is in regular use, and it is quicker than its reputation.

Anyone who has been defamed online, or who is being threatened with the disclosure of private material, is dealing with a legal problem and not merely a personal crisis, and the law's response to both is far stronger today than is generally understood.

Dr Aamir Nawaz