A PREDATORY paedophile from Tayside has been reported missing less than two months after his release from prison, the police warned last night.

Joseph Herbert Millbank (47), from Luncarty in Perthshire, failed to comply with licence conditions.

He was last seen in the Perth area on June 27 and a warrant has been granted for his arrest.

The registered sex offender is considered a threat to children and has posed as a council official in the past.

Millbank was convicted on January 10, 2002, at the High Court in Aberdeen, of three charges of lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and a breach of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982.

He was jailed for just six years, to the fury of his victims’ families.

Appeal judges later ruled he should serve 10 years behind bars, with another 10 years under supervision. He was released on May 6.

Millbank was the focus of one of the biggest child abuse hunts ever mounted by Scottish police before being arrested in 2001.

He admitted a string of offences involving taking indecent pictures of 11 children, as young as three, in Dundee and Aberdeen, between January 2000 and September 2001.

He admitted two charges of abuse, in Perth in the 1980s, and an offence of indecent behaviour in Inverness, where he photographed a six-year-old girl.

His ploy was to lure children into tenement closes, where he took indecent pictures of them, while committing other sex acts.

A search of his house and car by detectives uncovered a digital camera and a laptop computer, which included 500 indecent pictures of young girls.

He took the pictures while travelling the country as a freelance shop-fitter, and was finally caught out as detectives had his fingerprints on file from an earlier conviction for shoplifting.

Officers from Tayside were involved in the high-level investigation, joining colleagues from Grampian, Northern, Central and Fife.

Police believed Millbank might have been trying to collect an album of 10,000 pornographic pictures, needed to join the notorious Wonderland international paedophile ring.

Detective Chief Inspector Brian Yule, who led the investigation, at the time described him as a “real danger to little girls.”

Last year The Courier revealed Millbank had won the right to obtain information about the criminal pasts of employees in Dundee City Council’s criminal justice social services department.

It was unclear why he sought the information.

The police said Millbank is 6ft 2in and of average build. He has green/blue eyes and short dark hair, and is bald on top.

The police have set up a special hotline and anyone who knows Millbank’s whereabouts or has information about him should call immediately on 0800 0560944.