A STUDENT from Barking, London, has been jailed for more than six years for scamming visitors to pornography websites around the world.
Zain Qaiser used his programming skills and made hundreds of thousands of pounds by blackmailing porn website users with cyber attacks.
The 24-year-old is the most prolific cyber criminal to be sentenced in the UK, the Kingston Crown Court heard.
Judge Timothy Lamb QC said: "The harm caused by your offending was extensive - so extensive that there does not appear to be a reported case involving anything comparable."
An investigation by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) found that Qaiser was member of an international, Russian-speaking crime group that made huge profits from victims in more than 20 countries.
Mike Hulett, head of cyber investigations at the NCA, said: "We regard Zain Qaiser as probably the most significant cyber crime offender that the NCA has investigated.
"The sheer volume and complexity of the actions - the number of people he is connected with worldwide and the frequency of his operation made it so successful and led to him making the money that he did.
"I don't think we will ever know the true number of people who paid up."
Qaiser bought advertising on porn sites using fake identities and when users clicked the corrupted links, their computers were exposed to highly sophisticated "Angler" software.
Infected computers showed a message impersonating law enforcement demanding payment of up to 1,000 dollars (£767), the court heard.
"Out of fear of embarrassment from friends or family members discovering they had accessed pornography, many users paid the ransom," prosecutor Joel Smith told Kingston Crown Court.
"For obvious reasons very few people complained to law enforcement officials."
