Gambling Kingz – A pair of Polish computer hackers have been jailed in the UK for attempting to blackmail a Manchester based online casino operator.
Piotr Smirnow and Paatryk Surmacki were sentenced to five years and four months in prison for demanding that 50% of the online casino be transferred to their names.
According to the Serious Crime Division, the men targeted the unnamed online casino which employs 65 staff and has an annual turnover of £30 million.
“With millions of pounds and potentially dozens of jobs involved, Smirnow and Surmacki were playing for incredibly high stakes and clearly knew what they were doing,” said Detective Inspector Chris Mossop of the division. “They used their intimate, expert knowledge of online business to attempt to bully the victims into submission. But make no mistake, they may have been using the latest technology, but this was simply good old-fashioned blackmail.”
