Two men who subjected Coleen Rooney to a £5,000 blackmail plot involving more than 400 personal family photos have been jailed.
Lee Platt, 29, and Steven Malcolm, 42, touted the photographs around newspapers and magazines before offering them back to the Rooneys at a price.
The photos showed her, her footballer husband Wayne Rooney, and their young son Kai on family holidays and at their home, and with wider family members.
Both men pleaded guilty to the charge of blackmail and handling of stolen goods at Manchester Crown Court.
Platt's girlfriend, Jennifer Green, 26, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of handling of stolen goods.
Platt, Malcolm and Green came into possession of the camera and memory card after it went missing while Mrs Rooney was watching a concert at the MEN Arena in Manchester in May 2010.
The men then contacted Manchester United Football Club trying to extract £1,000 for the return of the memory card and photographs.
After negative publicity about her Manchester United and England footballer husband, they decided to up the ante, increasing their demand to £5,000.
They approached newspapers and magazines with a view to selling them.
The magazine then got in touch with Mrs Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford, about the approach.
The police were informed and deployed an undercover officer pretending to be Coleen and Wayne Rooney's publicity agent.
The court heard the undercover officer, who was given the pseudonym PC James, pretended he wanted to buy back the camera and contact was made with the trio.
A meeting was arranged at the Marriott Hotel in Manchester and an arrest was made when Malcolm handed a file contain photos of the Rooney family.
Platt was sentenced to two years in jail, Malcolm 20 months and Green was told to serve a 12-month community sentence.
Deborah Gould, prosecuting, said Mrs Rooney made a victim impact statement last week.
She said: "She indicates that she would use her camera to take personal photographs. Photographs not intended to reach the media, purely private photographs.
"She realised when she left the concert she no longer had the camera and it was reported stolen."
She added Mrs Rooney said it was "upsetting " to receive a request for money during a period of "unwanted media activity" for her husband.
"What was particularly distressing was that the family pictures were of no relevance to anyone else other than her and her family," she said.
"And it was said that the pictures showed her husband in some state which was untrue and caused her distress."
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