Nathan Wyatt, aka “Crafty Cockney.” File photo.
This journalist had interviewed Wyatt exclusively prior to his first arrest in September, 2016, on charges relating to the hack and attempted sale of pictures of Pippa Middleton. Wyatt was not jailed on those charges, however, and this journalist had been told by him that the royal family had intervened so as to avert a court case that might lead to the production of embarrassing photos. Whether that is true or not, this journalist cannot say as lawyers for Wyatt did not respond to inquiries sent at the time.
But Wyatt had also talked extensively with DataBreaches.net about his relationship with thedarkoverlord, which included, he said, teaching thedarkoverlord fraud techniques, and being asked by TDO to make an extortion phone call to a U.S. victim. That call (you can hear it here) was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Wyatt subsequently linked to it in a post on the now-shuttered Alpha Bay dark web marketplace. At times, Wyatt claimed that he never actually made the call and that he just recorded it as a joke because TDO was pressuring him to do it. But if you listen to the recording, you can hear someone else at the beginning answering the phone.
When Wyatt was arrested in 2016 and his devices seized, police found evidence of other crimes, including a hack of an unnamed law firm and an attempt to extort the law firm. It was on those charges that he was ultimately tried and sentenced to prison for 3 years.
But law enforcement had also – according to Curtis’s reporting – found evidence that Wyatt had used his own details and live-in partner’s details to set up bank accounts in the U.K. to funnel payments to thedarkoverlord from U.S. medical entities that TDO was attempting to extort at the time. In a copy/paste error by an associate of Wyatt’s, DataBreaches.net had accidentally been shown the bank account numbers in July 2016. At that time, however, DataBreaches.net did not know that “Nathan Wyatt” was the bad actor known to her as “Crafty Cockney.” And the TDO spokesperson at the time talked about Crafty Cockney as a low-level person or associate but not one of the core people in TDO. The new charges suggest that TDO may have been downplaying Wyatt’s role, and that Wyatt’s claims of tutoring TDO and assisting in other ways may have been more accurate.
So now Wyatt is reportedly fighting extradition to the U.S., it seems. According to Curtis’s reporting:
He has been charged with one count of conspiracy to blackmail healthcare providers in the USA, two counts of aggravated identity theft and three counts of threatening damage to a protected computer.
[…]
An arrest warrant was issued by the US district of Missouri on November 8th, 2017.
Curtis provides a lot of other details that will sound familiar to those who have followed my reporting on thedarkoverlord since 2016. The unnamed health records management firm referred to may be Quest Health Information Management Systems. I had reported how they had been hacked by TDO in 2016, which gave TDO login credentials to Quest’s clients, including medical entities in Missouri and Georgia.
The U.S. government likely has a lot of evidence against Wyatt, but for the benefit of readers who may be a bit confused by this new development, I will state here that Wyatt is almost certainly not the person who was the communicator for TDO back in June – July of 2016. How do I know that? Because I chatted with that individual while Wyatt was still being detained by law enforcement in the U.K. Then too, Wyatt’s writing, which I had ample opportunity to read in extended chats, was nowhere near the level of the individual who ran TDO’s Twitter account back then, who wrote the extortion demands and lengthy letters, and who communicated with journalists. Law enforcement may not have apprehended that first “TDO” yet.
Will Wyatt appeal to the U.K. to try him there for charges relating to hacking and extorting U.S. entities because he has three children there? Probably. But there are so many victims and witnesses in the U.S. and I doubt the U.K. will find him a sympathetic figure, even if he has children. Wyatt does not have the popular support of someone like Lauri Love.
As I frequently have to say when covering all things TDO: stay tuned.
Note: I do not know whether the law firm that Wyatt was convicted for hacking and extorting is the same law firm involved in the 9/11 files that thedarkoverlord has recently publicized and tried to sell. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same law firm, but I have no proof or information either way.
