Fired Sky worker tried to blackmail broadcaster for £40K Bitcoin
A disgruntled former Sky employee tried to blackmail the broadcaster for more than £40,000 in Bitcoin after he was sacked.
Imoudu Chaba, 37, worked as a customer service representative at the company from 2011 to 2015, but he later tried to extort £44,286 by hacking a former colleague’s hard drive to steal customer details.
He then threatened to post the sensitive data containing names and addresses on the dark web, where criminals trawl for potential fraud victims.
Chaba, of Baguley, Manchester, pleaded guilty at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court to four counts of blackmail and was sentenced to two years and four months in prison on Wednesday.
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Chaba sent an anonymous letter to a senior staff member in January 2018 outlining his demands.
The letter claimed he had seized over one million customer records from a company database and threatened to publish them on the dark web unless he was paid within the month.
He stated that he took the records after a manager left his computer unlocked and unattended.
Chaba demanded the money on the basis that he was wrongfully dismissed in 2015.
The cryptocurrency wallet he instructed to send the money to was set up using an email address that began with “cjack8102,” police said.
In October 2019, detectives became aware of an individual using the alias ‘CJACK8102’ on the dark web, which led them to link the email address and username to Chaba.
When they raided Chaba’s house, officers found a USB stick containing a spreadsheet with the names and addresses of 11,400 customers, and a copy of the letter given to the senior staff member.
They also found six other letters addressed to customers from the spreadsheet on his laptop.
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Each stated that there had been a data breach at the company and demanded £500 to prevent their personal details from being leaked further.
In total, Chaba attempted to extort a total of £47,286 from employees and customers.
Detective Constable Daniel Dankoff, from the City of London Police’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, said: “Chaba carried out a shameless plot for his own financial gain.
“When his attempts to blackmail a senior employee proved unsuccessful, he began targeting customers to exert pressure on the company.
“While Chaba used a variety of software to hide his identity, this sentencing sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to find criminals and stop their illegal activity.”
