A man from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire has been sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for his involvement in enabling cybercriminals to defraud approximately one million victims across 91 countries. The case was heard at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester, where 24-year-old Zak Coyne was found guilty of aiding more than 2,000 scammers in stealing at least £100m through a subscription-based service on his website LabHost.
Described by Judge Jenny Lester-Ashworth as facilitating fraud “on an industrial scale”, LabHost was considered one of the most professional and sophisticated platforms for online fraud globally. Coyne, who is reported to be on the autism spectrum, showed an obsessive interest in computer programming and managed to earn around £200,000 from criminals subscribing to his services, with payments made in cryptocurrency that he later converted to sterling.
The website hosted phishing pages mimicking 185 major banking, government, and commercial websites, including popular platforms like Amazon, Netflix, Uber, and UK banks, where subscribers would lure victims into logging in to fake pages to steal their personal information. The losses caused by LabHost totaled over £100m worldwide, with £32m originating from the UK alone, according to prosecutor Simon Gurney.
The Cyber Crime Unit within the Metropolitan Police, Europol, and other international law enforcement agencies collaborated to bring down LabHost in April 2024 after an extensive investigation. Following the shutdown, Thomas Short, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, emphasized that Coyne’s actions had enabled a sophisticated criminal enterprise that perpetrated fraud on a massive scale, inflicting distress on numerous victims.
Defense attorney Adam Roxborough noted that Coyne had not fully comprehended the extent of the criminal activities he was involved in, as his engagement with the project turned into an obsession. Coyne, a father of one, was apprehended at Manchester Airport in April 2024 and pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and one count of transferring criminal proceeds during a previous court appearance.
LabHost, co-founded by Coyne and an unidentified individual from Canada in August 2021, ran a subscription-based service that was dismantled following the collaborative efforts of law enforcement agencies. The case highlights the devastating impact of cyber fraud and the importance of combating such criminal activities to safeguard individuals and businesses from financial losses and emotional distress.
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