Eye Spy!
Police offers by day and private eye hackers by night; bugging phones and hacking into computers was just a night in the office for Jeremy Young and Scott Gelsthorpe, founders of Active Investigation Services (AIS) or "hackers are us". Its a profitable business they had been running for 6 years until they got caught.
One of their clients, waste millionaire Adrian Kirby, paid £47,000 for AIS to spy on environmental investigators.
US millionaire Matthew Mellon was acquitted of spying on his ex-wife, Tamara, founder of the Jimmy Choo shoe company.
How did they do it?
Young admitted breaking the law. His former receptionist Karen Coulson told the court he was a “good storyteller” who told lies and “would stretch the truth”.
But they were dubbed “Hackers Are Us” in court for the “extras” they offered for a wealthy elite. They used illegal means to provide extra services for clients and had a price list for those services.
For £5,000, AIS would “monitor” - or hack into - an e-mail account.
For this, they used the expertise of Marc Caron, an IT specialist based in Phoenix, Arizona.
He used so-called Trojan horses, which infiltrate computers through a seemingly innocuous e-mail, website or programme, but then allow hackers access to everything on the machine.
Caron pleaded guilty in the US and will be sentenced on 28 June.
They could also tap a landline telephone at a cost of £6,000 per month.
For this, they employed the services of Michael Hall. He was sentenced before this trial began after admitting a string of offences.
AIS also used firms of “blaggers”. Put simply, these were con artists who impersonated someone in a official capacity to trick information from a subject. On at least one occasion, AIS asked a blagger to pretend to be a doctor in order to glean personal medical histories.
Gelsthorpe told the court that “seemed like fair play” to him.
Clients varied. Some were individuals - often suspicious spouses.
These were known as OTS enquiries - for “(A bit) On The Side”.
Subjects varied too and included local council officials and ordinary residents.
Among the computers targeted were official networks in government offices.
AIS was investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Corruption Command following a tip-off from BT.
Credits:
- Thanks to woo-shy for the cool information