This is the moment a taxi driver tried to meet an underage girl he thought he had groomed over the internet but was snared by vigilante paedophile hunters.

Nawaz Zada used a dating website and WhatsApp to arrange to meet someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl for sex in a hotel room in July this year.

But the 24-year-old graduate from Middlesbrough was unaware that the schoolgirl, called 'Georgia', was in fact a trap set by vigilante group Dark Justice.

A video filmed by the group shows Zada running away frantically when he realises he has been caught by the group.

This is the moment a vigilante group confronted a man who thought he was meeting a young girl for sex

Despite the predator's actions, a judge at Teesside Crown Court today spared Zada jail for his crime.

Prosecutor Ian Mallarkey said that the group had set up a profile in the name of Georgia on an adult dating website called Skout.com, initially pretending she was claiming to be 18 years old.

But when Zada contacted the profile, the court was told that the group immediately informed him that 'Georgia' was 14 from Newcastle and was in Year 9 at school.

Mr Mallarkey said: 'The group replied saying Georgia is 14 years old, from the beginning of the introduction the knowledge that she was 14 is immediate.

'After the defendant reveals his name to be Naz, they exchange numbers and message through the WhatsApp application, when the conversation quickly becomes sexual.

'The defendant initiates the sexual content and asks her to send pictures of her body to him before asking if she was single.'

Taxi driver Nawaz Zada had been discussing sex with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl online

When confronted by the group in Newcastle, Zada ran away but was later arrested by the police

Dark Justice are a vigilante group set up to snare paedophiles online. They then record the meetings

The court heard Zada was persistent in his requests and spoke about performing a number of sex acts with the girl.

He offered to buy her gifts and treat her to trips to the cinema which he said he would pay for when he got a job.

He also arranged to meet up with Georgia a week later, where he said he would pay for a hotel room and suggested he recorded them having sex there.

But when Zada turned up at Times Square, Newcastle in his taxi for the arranged meeting on July 25, he was greeted by the two men from Dark Justice who confronted him with a camera and contacted the police.

Mr Mallarkey added: 'Members of Dark Justice were waiting as he arrived in his Boro Taxi and the defendant made off on foot. The defendant claimed he had been set up when police arrested him.'

Zada admitted a single charge of trying to meet an underage girl following sexual grooming at an earlier hearing.

Zada today avoided a prison term for a single charge of trying to meet an underage girl following sexual grooming when a judge at Teesside Crown Court agreed to suspend his sentence

In mitigation, Aisha Wadoodi said that there was some form of entrapment involved in the case and the defendant realised that he had brought shame on his family

She said: 'This was not a defendant who was caught going on a website that was targeting young underage girls, his initial contact was with what he believed was an 18-year-old.'

Judge Simon Phillips QC sentenced Zada to a 16-month sentence, suspended for two years.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register and was made subject of a sexual harm prevention order and a community supervision order.

The Judge told Zada: 'I have been asked to consider that the girl was not a real person but was in fact fiction but I see this as a point of limited relevance as you knew what you were doing. I have just been persuaded to suspend your sentence of imprisonment.