Four men face community service orders of between 90 and 120 hours for responding to a police advert offering sex with a 16-year-old for money. Paid sex with people under the age of 18 constitutes youth prostitution in the Netherlands and is forbidden by law.

The public prosecution office used fake ads to combat the sexual exploitation of teenagers for the first time in 2021. However, in that particular case, the court said prosecutors had not proved the defendant had intended to do more than chat with the fake teenager.

The four men, who appeared in court on Friday, thought they were meeting a boy who said he “could use some extra money”. Once at the meeting place, they were confronted by police and arrested.

It is the first time the public prosecution department has taken legal action against men who actually turned up at a meeting point to have paid sex with a minor.

Public prosecutor Maarten Noordzij said that the fake profiles attract “dozens of reactions” within hours. “Fortunately, there are people who say no when they clock they are talking to a minor but in many cases that is no hindrance,” he told broadcaster NOS.

The fake ad method constitutes entrapment, lawyer Maarten Kuipers, who represented one of the men at Thursday’s hearing, said. “The biggest risk of this method is that it puts ideas into people’s heads. It doesn’t mean they were planning on committing an unlawful act but that they have been enticed into doing so,” he said.

Prosecution is not the main aim of the fake profiles, Noordzij said but meant to “increase awareness and prevent more teenagers from becoming victims”. “We  need a discussion about how easy it is to arrange sex with minors for money online,” he said.

The men, aged 56, 45, 42 and 42, will be sentenced on February 5.