In a breathtakingly short space of time, the internet has revolutionised every aspect of our lives.

Crime is, of course, no exception - the web has created the opportunity to commit news types of offences as well as new ways to develop drug trafficking, terrorism, theft and money-laundering networks.

The main battle for law enforcement in the UK and abroad is to crack the increasingly sophisticated tools online criminals use to hide behind the veil of anonymity.

In the most serious cases, this falls to the National Crime Agency (NCA), Britain's equivalent to the American FBI.

In recent weeks the NCA's cyber crime detectives claimed two major scalps - including Zain Qaser from Barking, east London, whose criminal network is believed to have netted millions from blackmailing users of legal porn websites.

Another major case involved Liverpool's Thomas White, an international drug trafficker who tried to sell images of children being raped and abused.

From raking in what is estimated to be millions in profits, both men are now beginning long jail sentences.

The Silk Road

Drugs sold by Thomas White, 24, who lived in a luxury apartment on the Liverpool waterfront and ran the Silk Road 2.0 website
Drugs sold by Thomas White, 24, who lived in a luxury apartment on the Liverpool waterfront and ran the Silk Road 2.0 website

 

The development of the so-called Dark Web, a section of the internet only accessible to users with specific software, enabled new entirely online black markets to flourish.

In 2011, US university student Ross Ulbricht developed the infamous Silk Road marketplace, which guaranteed what was then an almost uncrackable cloak of anonymity to users enabling them to buy and sell whatever they wanted.

The network facilitated the trafficking of firearms, hard drugs and mass money laundering and became a priority for law enforcement.

Eventually the FBI worked out Ulbricht was behind the username Dread Pirate Roberts, the online account running the site, and in 2013 he was arrested as he used his laptop in a San Francisco public library.

Texas born Ulbricht has since been convicted of drugs trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking offences and was hit with a double life sentence plus 40 years in prison with no possibility of parole.

But the brutal sentence handed down by the American courts did not deter Liverpool's Thomas White from picking up where Ulbricjt left off.

From drop-out to millionaire

Former Liverpool John Moores Student Thomas White, 24, was jailed for running the web site "Silk Road 2.0" which traded $96m in drugs, computer hacking tools and other items on the dark web and from which he took a cut. His laptop also contained indecent images of children.
Former Liverpool John Moores Student Thomas White, 24, was jailed for running the web site "Silk Road 2.0" which traded $96m in drugs, computer hacking tools and other items on the dark web and from which he took a cut. His laptop also contained indecent images of children.

 

White, who left his accounting degree at Liverpool John Moores University after a single term, was an administrator of the original Silk Road.

But within a month of its shutdown he launched Silk Road 2.0.

The 24-year-old’s dark web site specialised in supplying class A and B drugs, as well as legal highs.

Though investigators can’t be sure how much money he made, around $96m of goods were traded on Silk Road 2.0., from which White took between and 1% and 5% commission on each sale from the tens of thousands of users.

Although he had no legitimate income, White paid £10,700 up front to rent his plush apartment on Liverpool’s city water front .

When NCA investigators, working alongside FBI agents, cracked the network and raided White's apartment - an even darker element of White's offending came to light.

Under his bed detectives found a laptop which contained 464 category A (the most severe) indecent images of children.

Thomas White, 24, who ran the Silk Road 2.0 website, bought £35,000 of computers to help him run the dark web shop
Thomas White, 24, who ran the Silk Road 2.0 website, bought £35,000 of computers to help him run the dark web shop

In an online chat with a fellow administrator of Silk Road 2.0, White said he wanted to set up a paedophiles’ website “because there is money to be made from these people”.

A vast amount of encrypted material was discovered on White's £35,000 worth of computers, and he was found to own 50 Bitcoins, now worth £192,000.

Last month he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and making 464 category A indecent images of children, and was sentenced last week at Liverpool Crown Court to five years and four months in prison.

The Lizard Squad

Pictured is Jordan Hunter
Pictured is Jordan Hunter

 

While White's primary motivation to commit cyber crime was money - Jordan Hunter simply enjoyed causing panic and fear with other internet 'pranksters' .

The now 21-year-old, of Boundary Street, in Southport , was one of several individuals behind the alias ‘Jordie’, a member of a collective of hackers known as the Lizard Squad.

The group was behind a high-profile attack on the servers of video-gaming services Xbox Live and the Playstation network on Christmas day 2014.

But the Twitter accounts @EvilJordie and @GDKJordie, associated with that hack – were also linked to potentially deadly incidents of so-called 'Swatting' which led to Hunter being jailed last year.

Swatting involves anonymous internet criminals calling emergency services to report fake incidents such as bomb threats or shootings with the intention of getting armed police, or Swat Teams, sent to a particular location.

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Hunter, then 17, terrorised the United States from behind a computer screen in his parents’ Southport home.

In one call, he told a call dispatcher at the New Jersey based Garfield Police Department “I just shot my mother” and claimed he was planning to shoot a gas cooker and blow up an apartment block.

The call led to a massive police deployment with armed officers surrounding the building and bursting into apartments.

In another chilling call he claimed to be a man named John Halmus, said he was armed with a machine gun and threatened to massacre students at Iona College in New York State.

In a third, more serious incident, Hunter teamed up with another ‘swatter’ to target Denison University in Ohio.

His accomplice, a male with a Scottish accent, claimed to be a gunman named Mohammed, armed with an assault rifle, who had taken a hostage named as James.

Hunter was brought to justice after a jount US and UK police operation and jailed for 16 months at Liverpool Crown Court , after admitting three counts of perpetrating a bomb hoax.

FBI agent's terror

Gerald Ford International Airport with FBI logo
Gerald Ford International Airport with FBI logo

 

In a similar case to the one that saw Hunter jailed, Birkenhead student Gregory Sales caused mass panic in the States and even targeted the family of an FBI agent.

Sales, who caused the evacuation of thousands of US citizens with chilling fake bomb threats, sobbed in the dock of Wirral Youth Court as he was locked up.

The then 15-year-old , who lived a “double life” as a mild-mannered schoolboy, threatened to kidnap the wife and daughters of FBI agent Christian Zajac – and “slaughter” them if his demands for $20,000 were not met.

Sales admitted one charge of threats to kill and 11 of communicating bomb hoaxes to schools, universities, TV stations, and international airports, which sparked a massive response from US security forces who classed the incidents as “domestic terrorism”.

The threats began on September 2014 and May 2015, when Sales was aged just 15.

The court heard how Sales told Mr Zajac that a bomber, disguised as a pizza delivery worker, would visit his home before ordering deliveries from three different restaurants which sent pizzas to the agent’s house.

The agent's young children were left "screaming in terror" after over-hearing a threatening voicemail left for their father.

Referring to threats to Mr Zajac, whose children screamed in terror after overhearing a voicemail, District Judge Michael Abelson said: “When I refer to fantasy and fact blending together, this is no game. You must surely have appreciated as an intelligent young man at the time the horror you caused his young family, the fear you instilled in them.”

The teenager was eventually caught after FBI investigators traced IP addresses, the unique code attributed to internet devices, to his mum’s house in Bidston.

Devastating blackmail

Joshua Probert
Joshua Probert

 

Liverpool student Joshua Probert, rather than seeking money or notoriety, targeted vulnerable children to satisfy his sexual urges .

The 22-year-old blackmailed more than two dozen young girls and women into performing degrading sex acts via the internet.

He used devious tactics to get his victims to send him intimate photographs of themselves and then resorted to “sextortion”.

One of his 26 horrified and embarrassed victims - who come from England, Scotland, Wales, the USA, France, Belgium and the Netherlands - described it as “cyber rape”. When eventually interviewed by police he admitted: “I know, it’s terrible.”

He ignored desperate pleas from his distressed victims - 11 of them children - to delete images and videos in which he had ordered them to perform depraved sex acts on themselves, call him ‘master’ and hold up signs saying their body was his.

Such was the fear and trauma he caused by threatening to share the footage some of the victims contemplated killing themselves. One 14-year-old girl described herself to him as “the most broken teenager right now”.

Probert also shared some of the videos he had with other perverts.

Judge Gary Woodhall, sentencing the sick pervert to 12 years in jail with an extended four years on licence, said: “These were particularly sinister threats designed to place the females in an invidious position - either face public humiliation... or agree to your sick and depraved demands.

“These offences were designed to allow you to obtain sexual images and videos of these females for your own sexual satisfaction causing significant emotional harm to them.

“Many of your victims, particularly the younger ones, felt unable to stand up to you and chose the humiliation of performing your demands rather that suffering public humiliation. The demands... involved you exercising sadistic control over the females.”