A farming influencer who campaigned against Rachel Reeves‘s inheritance tax was targeted in a £2,000 sextortion plot – after blackmailers threatened to post an AI sex video of him.

Gareth Wyn Jones, 58, has built up a huge two million strong following online by documenting life on a rugged hill farm in the mountains of North Wales.

Now, he believes his status as an ‘agri-influencer’ led him to be targeted by online trolls trying to earn a quick buck.

Mr Jones said he was sent a deepfake video of himself having intercourse with a mystery woman and was told he must pay £2,000 to stop it appearing online.

However, he refused to give into the blackmailers demands and has instead threatened legal action against those responsible.

The blackmailer, claiming to be the woman in the video, said: ‘See, you have to pay me £2,000 or I will log into your Facebook account and post about your sex video with me and pictures.

‘I will also hack your phone number and call your wife and show her, and I will also post it on social media. So to avoid this, just pay me £2,000 and be free.’

Mr Jones said: ‘It was very scary. I suppose you could call them trolls. They demanded payment for a video with this woman but I can tell you for a fact there are no images or videos of me with this woman. The whole thing was obviously AI generated.

‘The bigger the profile, the more tempting the opportunities. They were clearly professionals and had I been more weak-willed, I might have caved in. But it was so obviously a fake that I had to stand up to them.’

Mr Jones said the scam began after he was contacted by someone called ‘William’ offering to sell goats online for £5 each before the picture changed to a woman.

‘But then they tried to blackmail me, telling me that if I didn’t pay them £2,000, they were going to send naked pictures of me and this individual. They sent a little AI clip which didn’t look realistic,’ he said.

Mr Jones – who has more than two million online followers – posted about the threat on his Facebook page only to see his social media account shadowed by Meta bosses and have his reach limited.

He said: ‘I’ve since been contacted by other people who have been targeted by similar scams, so it’s not just me. It’s why I posted a warning on my Facebook page, telling everyone there are dangerous people out there.

‘I’m really, really frustrated by what Facebook has done since.

‘So I posted it on my Facebook page saying these are dangerous people, be careful – and Facebook came after me. They’ve restricted and shadowed my page, and it’s really frustrating.’

Meta said the post on Mr Jones’s account had been ‘removed in error’

‘It’s since been reinstated, and all related restrictions on the account have been lifted,’ a spokesperson said.

Mr Jones has previously campaigned against the Chancellor’s inheritance tax raid on farmers, calling it a ‘shameless tax grab’.

‘To all intents and purposes, Labour has rung the death knell on family farming in Britain, and the catastrophic consequences will be felt for generations to come,’ he wrote at the time.

His family have been farming the same land in North Wales for 375 years, something he hoped to pass down to his children, but now feels is ‘impossible’.