A man who sexually harassed young women by posing as a recruiter on the professional social network LinkedIn was sentenced in Paris to 18 months in prison, nine of which were suspended, reports Euronews citing news agency AFP. The women were contacted via LinkedIn in 2021 by Armand T., 34, and interviewed via video conference, during which he kept his camera switched off. The court case was the first time the women had seen his face.

Most of them were students in their early twenties and this was their first job interview, and he adapted his ruse depending on the LinkedIn profiles of the young women looking for jobs: sometimes he presented himself as a business lawyer, sometimes an accountant. He asked the young women to stand up and turn around in front of the camera, tie their hair back or open their shirt.

In court, the offender denied any sexual harassment, regretting a regretting a problem of interpretation. The judge said, “It's not a question of interpretation. Encroaching on the sphere of privacy in the context of work is prohibited by law.” The court ordered the prison sentence to be served with an electronic ankle bracelet. The court also imposed a psychological monitoring requirement as part of the sentence, and he will have to compensate seven of the women. A total of 15 women were identified as victims.