Tony Colston-Hayter, a legendary Acid-House promoter, was behind an online scam that targeted the bank, taking money as well as the card details of 24,000 Barclay’s customers
The Daily Mail reports that he used the card details to go on mega shopping sprees at Harrods and Selfridges and that he also looked to target celebrities as well as the general public. The paper also reckons this was one of Britain’s “biggest cyber bank robberies”.
For those unaware of Tony Colston-Hayter, he was the entrepreneur responsible for Sunrise, the promotion company that threw some of the biggest raves of the time.
Sunrise raves were in part responsible for alerting the UK media to acid house and The Sun‘s now famous campaign against the movement. Colston-Hayter also got into some funny situations at the time, handcuffing himself to Jonathan Ross on TV and travelling to the Conservative party conference in 1989 in order to convince members that he and his raves were a product of “enterprise culture”.
Now after he pleaded guilty to one of Britain’s biggest cyber bank robberies at Southwark Crown Court this week, Colston-Hayter’s extraordinary downfall from millionaire entrepreneur and party organiser to cyber crime’s ‘Mr Big’ can be revealed.
He used a 24 SIM phone exchange, a sophisticated telecoms machine which allowed him to impersonate High Street banks in order to solicit account details from hapless customers..
Fraudsters used a keyboard video mouse to take control of the bank’s computers remotely and siphon off the cash. Police were alerted when stolen credit cards were used to buy a number of Rolex watches in Harrods and Selfridges.
This week Colston-Hayter pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal credit balances from Barclays Bank. He also admitted conspiring with others to commit fraud using credit cards, conspiracy to steal and two counts of possession of articles for use in fraud.