A SACKED waitress from Galashiels wreaked revenge on her restaurant boss by blitzing his wife with 30 messages on social media about their affair, Selkirk Sheriff Court has been told.

Joanna Wozniak also shared the pictures, videos and text screenshots with other staff of her married lover by Facebook Messenger after he refused to meet her wage demands.

The 34-year-old hit the roof after being sacked and sent Antonio Caterino a video she had of him assaulting her during an argument and warned him, 'That's for starters, let's see what we have for the main course'.

But the mum-of-two ended up being charged with extortion by threatening to expose their affair if he did not pay her £300 a week wages and also breaching the Communications Act by sending offensive messages to his wife Sara.

Following a two-day trial Wozniak of Torwoodlee Road, was found guilty of an amended charge of attempting to extort money from Mr Caterino by threats.

She was found not guilty of the messages offence because the sheriff ruled that while they were no doubt upsetting they were not offensive.

Mr Caterino - who runs Monte Cassino Italian restaurant in Melrose - told the trial how he feared Wozniak was going to "destroy" his marriage and business after their affair of several months ended.

The relationship deteriorated on May 31 last year when the couple were involved in a heated argument at the Anema Core restaurant in Dalkeith, which Mr Caterino was also running at the time.

On Monday, June 18 Wozniak sent him a message saying she was returning to work at the Melrose restaurant the following day and wrote, 'You will pay me £300 every week. That's my rules. I will fight for my kids. I am very dangerous'.

Mr Caterino, 47, replied saying she would be getting paid the same as everyone else at the Melrose restaurant - which was in the region of £150 for three shifts - which sparked more threatening messages including, 'You will pay for this'.

It was on that day he decided to come clean to his wife and admitted he had had an affair with Wozniak.

On the following day (Tuesday June 19) when Wozniak returned to work , Mr Caterino sacked her and gave her a week's wages.

Later that night Mrs Caterino was contacted by a friend to say that she had been sent messages from Wosniak giving details about the affair with her husband.

She told the trial that she unblocked Wosniak on Facebook to see what the messages contained Mrs Caterino said: "On Messenger there were videos of my husband, pictures of him and her together and lots of messages between them. There were about 30 messages."

After hearing about the messages, Mr Caterino drove to a police station at 3am on June 20 to report the matter.

Asked how she felt Mrs Caterino, 45, said, 'I was sick, hurt. There was no need to do it to me'.

She told the trial how she was "devastated" when her husband had admitted to the affair on June 18.

She said: "It was the day after my birthday. He said in a roundabout way he had been seeing her. I did not get from the start it was sexual until I asked him if he had been sleeping with her and he said yes."

Wozniak, who is originally from Poland, first started working at the Italian restaurant in Melrose but had offered to work for Caterino when he opened a new outlet in Dalkeith in June 2017.

He would often drive her from her home in Galashiels to Dalkeith and an affair started around November time.

Wozniak told the court that she had spent nights in hotels with Mr Caterino in Glasgow, London and Manchester and he had invited her to his home in the Borders when his wife was away but she had not gone out of "respect".

One of the reasons for their argument on May 31 was that he had changed his mind about taking her to London on a trip.

She said: "I was feeling used.

"We had nine months together and nothing happened. I wanted him to decide of he wanted to be with me."

Wozniak admitted threatening to tell his wife about the affair when they argued but said she did not mean to ever do it.

However when he told her that he had told his wife everything about the affair and she had been sacked, she said, 'I knew he would not have told her the whole truth so I decided to contact her'.

She insisted she did not intend to hurt Mrs Caterino and said she apologised.

After she was sacked she also reported Mr Caterino in connection with the incident at the Dalkeith restaurant on May 31, 2018, and he ended up appearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on a domestic assault charge for which he was admonished.

In his ruling Sheriff Peter Paterson said Wozniak's actions were of a "spurned lover". He described it as a "very minor " extortion attempt.

Defence lawyer Paul Smith said that Wozniak had obtained employment as a hotel duty manager but a conviction for attempted extortion would likely affect this.

He asked in all the circumstances for an absolute discharge to be imposed which would mean she would not have a criminal conviction.

Sheriff Paterson said that he would continue consideration of the case for three months and if she had been of good behaviour during that period then he would impose an absolute discharge.