Disgraced Stephen Bear ‘only has £60,000’ to his name as court hears he made £22,000 from non-consensual sex tape
26 January 2024, 13:07 | Updated: 26 January 2024, 13:09
Stephen Bear ‘only has £60,000’ left to his name and made £22k from a non-consensual sex tape with his ex-partner, a court heard on Friday.
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Bear, 34, was released from prison early last week after serving half of his 21-month sentence for sharing a sex tape of his Love Island ex Georgia Harrison.
He was jailed in March after filming and uploading footage of himself having sex with Ms Harrison without her permission on OnlyFans.
But the former TV star returned to court on Friday with an application for confiscation, which will determine whether he will have to pay back the profit from the video.
A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing heard that the tape made £1,650.98 but he earned more afterward due to the increase in his number of subscribers, which rose by 65% within a month.
“Mr Bear is not a millionaire. He has £60,000 from the sale of a house and little else,” the Crown Prosecuting Council told the court.
"At this time [when he uploaded the video] Mr Bear was pretending to be a billionaire on his Twitter account. His most valuable asset at that time was selling sex videos."
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The court heard that Bear made a ‘criminal profit’ of £22,305.46 from the video, from those who paid specifically for the video as well as the increase in the number of subscribers.
At the time Bear uploaded the video to his OnlyFans account on 8 November 2020, he had 1,061 subscribers.
A month after uploading the video, which could be viewed for £7.95, his subscribers increased by 822.
In July, Bear was ordered to pay Ms Harrison £207,000 in damages - the highest amount awarded in an image abuse case and one of the highest of all time in a privacy claim arising from a single act.
Judge Christopher Morgan said he assessed the sum he made to be £22,305.34, adding that Bear had increased his subscription fee and how much people had to pay to access the video.
At his sentencing previously, Bear was handed a restraining order and told not to contact Ms Harrison for five years in addition to the over £200,000 to be paid in damages.
Bear must also keep police informed of his whereabouts for a decade.
Months after the trial, he was forced to sell his Essex home for £525,000.
