Extortion and Crimes in the Cyberworld (Nothing New)

There are some areas in the cyber world which are crimes which go back over the decades about how some of the original hacking crimes really started. "Web of Makebelieve - Death, Lies and the Internet" is a series on Netflix. This series, shares a number of stories and testimonies, mostly of cybercrimes in the USA. The predominant theme, (although nothing new) is pioneers of cyber crime. All of the stories covered in the series very much still need to be in our realm of thinking when we think about hacking etc. The first story is about Tyler Barris and the gamer prank of spooking or disrupting the target with large scale SWAT teams searching for bombs/hostages through hoax calls made to emergency services. This evenually resulted in a SWAT team storming a fake address that Tyler had been given as a joke and it resulted in a SWAT team gunning down someone who was completely innocent at a wrong address. The reason this is in the cyber crime realm is because it used voip calls to hide identity, and Twitter to self promote the services and drum up modestly paid requestsfor services to do swatting on targets. Ultimately he got caught through informants and tracking down his location. Another story was about a hacker who spooked young women by blackmailing them as part of a sextortion scam which initially started off as friendly to gain some initial identity information from the victim and to build trust. It largely took place using texts in chat rooms whereby the attacker took-over social media, email and bank accounts and demanded more and more inappropriate photos/actions from the victim. It involved shaming people by using photo material/stolen identity information to manipulate and control the victim. The attacker used masked phone numbers to hide his identity. However the Police were able to find the attacker's identity through contacting Apple and tracing the number. Yet another story was about a hacker who sent off fake tax returns assuming the identity of dozens of deceased people to the Taxation service to gain funds fraudulently. He started his profession by making and using fake IDs, not fulfiling orders (scams) and networing with other online criminals through forums. A cyber security expert conveyed how many people inadvertently leave breadcrumbs all over the internet about their identity. However this criminal used botnets and proxies to hide his tracks. The hacker recruited more people. These other people came in contact with the real world but the hacker mostly remained hidden. He also wanted to ensure that elaborate instructions were followed so he could obtain the cash that was generated through the fraudulently obtained funds. One of downfalls of this cyber criminal was that the VPN was distributed by undercover government officers who became part of the leadership of the online hacker group so they could listen in on conversations surrepticiously.