He had previously been convicted of creating and distributing indecent images and videos of children.

Andrew Green, prosecuting, told the court how in August 2019, two undercover police officers began talking to Reynolds online.

The defendant engaged with the officers under the username ‘Black Joe’ and claimed to be 28 years old.

During conversations, he supplied access to 9,000 indecent sexual images and videos to the officers believing them to be ‘like-minded people’.

Reynolds told one officer that ‘everyone likes children, they just won’t admit it’ and that he should ‘shack up with a single mum’.

The undercover police officer told Reynolds that he had a young child of his own as part of the decoy.

As the conversation began to escalate, Reynolds said that the undercover police officer should ‘do whatever you manage to get away with’ when left alone with the child.

He added that being allowed to look after the child unsupervised was a ‘perfect situation’.

Techincal data obtained during these conversations, such as IP addresses, lead police to linking ‘Black Joe’ to Reynolds.

He had been working away in both Norway and Aberdeen and police managed to link online searches to these movements.

When they searched Reynolds’ home in Northop at the time, they found two laptops, where ‘tens of thousands’ of images and videos were discovered.

These included images of all categories, of children aged from babies to teenagers and also of beastiality.

Further images, which Reynolds took himself, were found on a Samsung mobile discovered at the home but Reynolds claimed to have lost an Iphone police had asked him to bring to the station with him for interview.

In the interview, he denied having any sexual interest in children and also denied being ‘Black Joe’.

Sentencing Reynolds, Judge Rhys Rowlands said: “This was repeated, depraved behaviour on your part and one which has to attract a custodial sentence.”

He was sentenced to a combined five-and-a-half years in jail.

Judge Rowlands handed him 12 months for the count of making indecent images, two years for taking and producing indecent images and two-and-a-half years for the distribution of indecent images.