LONDON — Zain Qaiser, the student hacker who was jailed in April for more than six years by a U.K. court, has been ordered to pay £270,000, approximately $355,000 in U.S. dollars, and to sell his Rolex watch or face additional jail time.
The monetary amount, plus the watch, are thought to be the sum of the convicted criminal's assets and will be used as partial restitution for his victims, according to the Barking and Dagenham Post.
Qaisar was sentenced to six years and five months following a scam in which he blackmailed porn users as part of a Russian-speaking cyber crime group.
He used so-called "ransomware" to work his blackmail scheme. When visitors to porn sites would click on ads legitimately bought by Qaiser, the user's computer would download a malware program that would hijack and freeze their computer, with a screen popping up, ostensibly from the FBI, demanding a "fine" of between US$300 and US$1000 to unlock their device.
In April, the BBC reported that investigators had found about £700,000 (approximately US$921,000), and evidence that he could have received as much as £4 million (approximately US$5.2 million).
At the time of his sentencing, Judge Timothy Lamb QC said "[t]he harm caused by your offending was extensive — so extensive that there does not appear to be a reported case involving anything comparable."
The U.K.'s National Crime Agency estimates that as many as 165,000 PCs may have downloaded the malware, with approximately 5 percent of those — 8,000 users — paying the ransom.
No adult website users apparently reported him to the police, but when one unnamed Canadian adult content provider asked him to stop, he subjected them to "a massive cyber attack... causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to the business," according to the BBC.
That company did contact the police.
Qaisar was first arrested over five years before his sentencing, but the case was delayed for that period due to the complexity of the scam and mental health concerns about the defendant.
He began the scam from his bedroom when he was only 17 years old, and over the course of 18 months, with the help of other hackers he met online in countries ranging from China to the U.S. to Belize, shifted millions of pounds through various crytocurrencies and received over £550,000 personally at the time of his arrest. He continued to receive funds during his pretrial period, investigators found.
If he does not pay the £270,000 and sell the Rolex watch within three months of a hearing last Wednesday, Qaisar faces an additional two years added to his sentence.
Image: National Crime Agency