High-living hacker swaps Porsche for porridge
A 21-year-old hacker was banged up yesterday for frauds netting him a Porsche, £40,000 in cash and £30,000 in gold bullion. Alistair Peckover is serving 20 months after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud, and admitting 50 other offences which were taken into consideration. Peckover targeted online betting sites, and also …
20 months in this caring sharing society means he will probably only serve about 1 year at most and that will probably be in a open prison. If the police managed to find 70+k of goodies then you can bet your life that there is a lot more they didn't find. Especially since a lot of it was in conveniently sized gold bullion bars. So for his crimes he is getting a year at a health farm plus whatever cash/gold the police didn't find. Sounds like a good job to me.
Ever been anywhere near a prison? Any actual idea what you're talking about?
Since he lives in Sussex then the open prison of choice there is Ford. This has no bars on the windows or locks on the doors. It has playing fields, farms and gardens for the inmates. It is, apparently, the prison celebrities prefer to be sent to.
I was there installing computers for the NHS
they were all on the way out to do a bit of gardening at the time !!
although i would prefer to be on bad company 2 drinking beer than sharing a room
Have you ever been near an open prison though?
Sure, places like Walton or Manchester are decidedly unpleasant but the open prisons I've had to visit for work have been better than some chilhood holidays I remember. Suffice to say, the piles of KFC/McD wrappers and empty beer cans in the bins *didn't* belong to the POs.
"Detective Constable Des Hamilton, of the Sussex Police Major Fraud Unit, said: "This is a classic example of a self-taught obsessive loner with real computer skills but no concern for his impact on other people.""
Nice, does the fact that he is a loner have any relevance here or do you just enjoy lumping loners and anyone with the common sense to teach themselves a skill (how obsessive!) in with criminals and psychopaths. No wonder everyone hates the police.
They are thick as pigsh!t.
Typically the loser from school who wasn't academic enough to achieve anything, didn't have the social abilities to have any real friends, was a bully.
Cop says hacker was "a self-taught obsessive loner ".
Just like Tabloid reports neighbour as saying "Mr Serial Killer was such a quiet man. Always kept himself to himself ".
IP address? Well that's easy. He would have to be stupid to hack via his ISP unless routing through several Chinese or Russian proxies, even then there are still links back to your ISP account, although getting server logs from open proxies in China and Eastern Europe/Russia would be tricky.
Then there are so many insecure wireless networks that one would never have to hack from the same one twice. Although neighbors may report strange vehicles parked in the area for an unusual length of time, so it's not entirely risk free. But if he is good with scripts most of the hacking can be automated.
From the Telegraph:
"He also took rent money somebody had been paying their landlord via bank transfer and directed money to himself that someone had put aside to buy a car."
"...directed money to himself..." being the pertinent info.
The problem with any fraud is collecting the cash, the funds have to be transferred from somewhere to somewhere and unless a false identity is used at every stage, it is going to lead back.
There are ways to avoid detection, but I would have to kill myself if I told you.
It's a shame about my moral compass really, I could be a rich man, but would I be happy?
When Pecky comes out I shall be waiting (discreetly) at the gates to follow him. The idea being to relieve him of one of his caches of gold. Whatshegonnado? --- call the police?
I shall give it to the poor.
Or to answer my own question, if I move to Sussex should I sell the Porsche first?
Not putting your name on the post asking advice on how to avoid getting caught might be a good starting point... Jus' sayin'
Good Lord, I was going to go the "serves him right" line as well, but hey, with a name like that it's no wonder he was a loner. He must have suffered no end in high school and he'll be in for some first-rate taunting in his "health farm" from his fellow . . . therapists ?
That said, he probably does have a stash somewhere. Gold bullion ? I thought that stuff was controlled.
Then again, maybe that's what got him done in.
According to the article he was only caught once.
Police comments read like a cheap detective novel..........
This intrigued me in the Original El Reg article:
"Four months of his sentence were in respect of breach of a previous suspended sentence."
I thought, that is wierd.
Cue Mr Google and here's a 19 year old Peckover in 2009:
http://www.thisissussex.co.uk/crawley/news/Crawley-teenager-admits-39-000-Internet-betting-fraud/article-741508-detail/article.html
"A TEENAGER has admitted hacking into an online gambling site to pay himself £39,000."
He didn't listen to the judge last year:
"Speaking to Peckover, he added: "Try to spend some time out of doors and away from that computer.""
Oh no wait. Yes it is. Ludicrously low sentence, presumably because the CPS can't be arsed following up on the numerous CMA and RIP offences which must have by necessity been committed on the way to the fraud. Lazy bastards.
Fucker should think himself very, very lucky indeed not to have been properly prosecuted and punished.
Go on, knock yourselves out, I'm /made/ of asbestos, me.
And did he have one of the fancy ID cards too?
they mentioned the Wii?
I mean, the guy's got £k's, a porche rolex's etc - but OMG he netted himself a Wii !!!!!!
Lets face facts, at some point in "everyone's" life they have done something, Shall we say "a little bit risky!". Ok most of us would never ever admit that we may have caused fraud to a bank or have stolen something from somewhere for someone....
So what, the guy got caught, do people really think he gives a crap, he pulled off a great money making hack. Now the sensible person in me (had the roles been reversed) would have been to place the bullion at 4 "private" locations. The money would have been moved on to an offshore account with one of the passports (lets face it thats all it REALLY takes nowadays).
Done, except for the obvious evidence IE PC's and whooping great car outside if he had actually thought it through he could have come off a winner really... But what do i know about hacking :)
Sign up, sign up for The Register's weekly IT security newsletter - click here
