A blackmailer who made his victim's life a “living hell” has been jailed for three and a half years.

Barrie Lee, 30, took control of his victim's finances, taking him on a weekly basis to his local Post Office and forcing him to hand over much of his benefits cash.

On one occasion, as he issued threats, Lee was holding a hammer and he chillingly told the man he was blackmailing: “You know what will happen if you don't pay up.”

Lee, formerly of Cockermouth, denied an offence of blackmail and other associated offences but he was convicted by a jury after a trial at Carlisle Crown Court.

Amanda Johnson, prosecuting, said the defendant and his victim had each been living in a bedsit property in John Street, Workington, when the offences came to light on June 10 last year.

An ambulance crew were called to the address because the other man had sustained a head injury and it was Lee who had called them.

Yet when they arrived the paramedics became concerned because they heard Lee threatening the man, telling him that he would beat him up and kill him if he did not hand over money.

When interviewed by the police, Lee claimed that his victim owned him cash. But during the trial disturbing details of his offence emerged.

At one point, the jury were shown a recorded interview with the victim, who at times broke down as he described how Lee had been bullying him and making him hand over money and at times his mental health medication.

The barrister said: “The defendant was taking [his vicitim] each week to the Post Office, instructing him to cash his benefits and then taking a large proportion of it. The threats he made were serious.”

The threats increased over time, said Miss Johnson.

In his police interview, the victim told the officer: "He has made my life such a living hell that I don’t really care any more. I can’t take it. I am not strong enough.... I thought he would actually kill me. He has got a hammer. He threatens me with the hammer.

"He is absolutely terrifying. I just feel he has destroyed my life.

“To me, now, this is not life and I just don’t know what to do any more. I genuinely can’t explain how frightened I am of him.”

On the day the ambulance crew were called, Lee had grabbed his victim and shoved him, so that he fell, hitting his head on a glass table.

Brendan Burke, for Lee, said the defendant had shown no remorse because he still denied committing the offence.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Hughes QC said that the victim had been extremely vulnerable, whose had been relived over time of a substantial part of his benefits and some of his medication.

The judge said: “In what was a deeply unpleasant incident, you assaulted him and bullied him, and even continued threatening him in the presence of the ambulance crew.”

Anybody who had seen the recorded interview with the victim could see that the victim was deeply traumatised and frightened to his wit's end by the defendant, said the judge. The defendant was convicted of five offences: blackmail, common assault, harassment, and two thefts.