A POKER player who threatened to massacre staff at an internet gambling site after losing thousands of pounds was jailed yesterday after a judge told him it was the worst imaginable case of its kind.

Michael Gallagher demanded $50,000 (£33,000) to cover his losses or warned he would travel to the company’s headquarters and “blow the f***ing brains out of every single person who crosses my path”.

The chilling threats were made in an email that the 35-year-old gambler sent after failing to get a satisfactory reply to accusations that there were irregularities in the way his hands had been drawn.

The Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox, expressed surprise that a blackmail charge against Gallagher was dropped in favour of one under the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

He said the case had all the hallmarks of a blackmail – which has a top sentence of 14 years, compared to a six-month maximum for sending an electronic communication conveying a threat.

Jobless Gallagher, of Tees Road, Redcar, east Cleveland, admitted the lesser charge when he was about to go on trial for blackmail last month, and was jailed for three months.

The court heard he lost nearly $30,000 – between £15,000 and £20,000 – after joining the online site last June, and before making the drunken threats in the early hours of May 25.

Gallagher wrote in his email: “I hope you take me seriously because I swear to God I’m going to do it. I will have my vengeance. I have planned this for six months. It’s what makes me sleep a night.

“Drifting off to sleep, thinking about what I am going to do, knowing full well that the butchering I do will get you exposed for what you are... I will gladly take a life sentence for that.

“Believe me, it will be my finest hour... $50,000 in my account, or believe me, you will all be dead.”

Next day, Gallagher sent another email apologising, insisting he did not mean it and explaining he had been drunk.

Rachel Dyson, mitigating, said Gallagher was not a crazed lunatic and never intended to carry out the threat, but accepted the email was likely to have caused distress. A day later, he was arrested at his home by armed police, but a search showed he did not have any guns.

Judge Fox told Gallagher: “It is no excuse, at all, that you were affected by drink.”