The continued rise of phishing — now infiltrating even government officials’ accounts — shows that cybercriminal networks remain highly active and dangerously effective.
According to a press release on April 14 from England and Wales top prosecution agency, the Crown Prosecution Service, British citizen Zak Coyne has been sentenced to almost a decade prison for operating a phishing service intended to generate scams for fraudsters.
The press release stated that Coyne played an “integral role in the creation, operation and administration” of Labhost, a one-stop phishing as a service site for scammers.
Coyne, who received $230,000 worth of laundered cryptocurrency for “designing and administering” Labhost’s website, was apprehended at Manchester Airport on Monday.
Users of Labhost would pay a monthly service and in turn garner access to websites that appeared to be legitimate government, commercial and banking URLs they could then use to defraud unsuspecting victims.
The massive scheme saw over one million victims in 91 countries defrauded, with losses of victims in the U.K. accounting for £32 million ($42 million USD).
Coyne pleaded guilty to one count of making or supplying articles for use in fraud, one count of encouraging or assisting the commission of an offense and one count of transferring criminal property at Manchester Crown Court.
“This was a sophisticated worldwide criminal enterprise which enabled others to perpetrate fraud on a massive scale, resulting in losses totalling more than £100 million,” Thomas Short, Specialist Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said.
“Fraud is far from a victimless crime and the harm caused by Coyne’s offending are measured not just in monetary terms, but also in the distress inflicted on countless victims who fell prey to these scams,” he added.
News of Coyne’s arrest and subsequent guilty plea comes amid the concerning continuation of phishing attacks at large, with 48% all emails in 2022 found to be spam.
On Tuesday, the BBC reported that Government Minister Lucy Powell’s X accunt had been hacked to promote a cryptocurrency scam.
Overall, Coyne’s conviction shows the growing international efforts to crack down on cyber-enabled fraud, as authorities grapple with the rising tide of phishing scams that continue to exploit millions of victims worldwide.
