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A man was jailed for eight and a half years after enabling cyber criminals to cheat about one million victims in 91 countries.
Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchesterheard that Zak Coyne (24) of Huddersfield in West Yorkshirehelped more than 2000 scammers steal at least £ 100m by running a subscription -based service via its website named Labhost.
Judge Jenny Lester-Ashworth described Labhost as fraud “on an industrial scale”.
During sentencing on Monday, she told the defendant: ‘It was one of the most professional and sophisticated websites in the world for committing online fraud.
“You also enjoyed what you did, and also by being plunged into the criminal underworld that works online.”
The court heard that Coyne, described as the autism spectrum, had an ‘obsessional interest’ in computer programming and received about £ 200,000 from criminals who signed up on his services Cryptocurrency He converted to Sterling.
Coste has been seized on a number of electronic items. Photo: met the police
Labhost was an online subscription -based service offering phishing pages -false versions of 185 large banking, government and commercial sites, including Amazon, Netflix, Uber and British banks.
Subscribers will then send messages to their proposed victims, and often say there was a problem with the account, to report the customer to the fake website pages and steal their details.
Simon Gurney, who was prosecuted, told the court that Coyne’s website caused global losses of more than £ 100m, of which £ 32m was alone from the UK.
He added: “It is likely that the losses caused were significantly greater. The risk of loss caused by the fraud committed by Lab hosts can be measured in several billions of pounds.”
The platform was brought down in April 2024 after an investigation that the cybercrime unit in the Metropolitan policeEuropol and other international police forces.
The Labhost website was taken by police in April 2024. Photo: met the police
Thomas Short, specialist prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “It was a sophisticated global criminal enterprise that enabled others to make a large scale fraud.
“Fraud is far from a victimless crime and the damage caused by Coyne’s offense is not only measured in financial terms, but also in the need that countless victims have inflicted on these scams.”
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Coyne defense Adam Roxborough said: ‘He actually gave no real reflection on the overall scale of what he made possible.
“Once engaged, it became something of an obsession with him.”
Coyne, a father-of-one, was arrested in April 2024 in the Lounge Department at Manchester Airport. He acknowledged two offenses of fraud and one of the transfer of criminal property during an earlier hearing.
Labhost is co-created by Coyne and a Canadian individual, who was not identified in August 2021.
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