A British man has been sentenced to a decade behind bars for a range of computer crime and drugs offenses.
Grant West, 26, was behind a string of phishing attacks against customers of big-name brands including Just Eat, Sainsbury’s, Ladbrokes and Argos.
Between July and December 2015 he’s said to have conspired with unknown parties to obtain data on Just Eat customers and use it “to facilitate fraudulent transactions whether directly or indirectly following transmission of the data to others.”
It’s believed he carried out these phishing attacks by spamming users with offers of a £10 gift voucher for answering questions about the service and filling in their personal details.
He’s also sentenced with conspiracy to defraud by “obtaining, using and supplying … fullz” – i.e. lucrative packages of complete identity information.
Presumably in order to obtain these credentials, West was convicted of carrying out “brute force” attacks using popular off-the-shelf tool Sentry MBA to compromise the websites of Sainsbury’s, Nectar, Groupon, AO.com, Ladbrokes, Coral betting, Uber, Asda and many more.
He was also convicted of possessing and supplying cannabis and selling “how to” guides to other hackers and fraudsters.
West was caught in dramatic fashion after police finally tracked the IP address of his girlfriend’s laptop, and captured the unlocked device as he was travelling from Rhyl to London by train.
“This prosecution was able to prove that Grant West was the prolific cyber hacker known as Courvoisier. West was caught by police conducting attacks on company websites,” said Sarah Jennings, of the Crown Prosecution Service.
“He sold the lists of financial information to make money and even used stolen credit card details to pay for holidays, food and shopping. In the end, West had no alternative but to plead guilty due to the overwhelming evidence.”
West is said to have made over £180,000 by selling his wares on the now-defunct dark web marketplace Alpha Bay.