Pincher Robinson was quite proud of his claim to be a thief. His ultimate ambition at the end of the day was to be identified by the national press as a master criminal. His father before him had earned himself the unofficial title of The Pickpocket of Pimlico, and had been sent to prison for most of Pincher’s young life. The lad’s enjoyment of life would increase by quite a few notches in the few and far between times when his dad was at home. Fairgrounds and the great big fields where a pop rallies would be taking place were always on his dad’s agenda. Almost anywhere that crowds gathered in fact.
Indeed the image of father and small son wandering about, eyes wide open taking it all in, proved to be a good disguise for an experienced dip like Pincher’s dad.
If only he had been any good at it, that is.
But he became widely known to the upholders of the law and after a visit from the local constabulary Pincher’s dad would be again on his way to enjoy the inside of one of Her Majesty’s institutions for regular criminals.
Eventually it seemed that his dad expected great things from his one and only son.
But Pincher regarded his father’s activities as being very old fashioned. There had to be another way of relieving people of their wealth.
Pincher was twenty one when his old man `obtained’ for him a good quality lap-top computer. Pincher found it strange that for a new piece of hardware there were so many `old’ files stored on the machine, and the keyboard looked somewhat used. Most of these were of no interest to Pincher except one. This was a `Spreadsheet’ with columns of numbers. The right hand column was headed “Profit”, the bottom line of which said “Total after tax £152,000”
It was a long time before Pincher could take his greedy eyes of this particular column of numbers.
Then it happened. A light went on in Pincher’s brain. No wandering around fields trying to find someone with a fairly thick wallet, whilst keeping a beady eye open for the out of place men in badly pressed suits. In any case most of the spectators could barely raise the funds for a glass of beer or a cup of camp tea.
So what then was this startling realisation?
He would steal electronically—
I.E. BY MEANS OF A COMPUTER.
When he told his dad, his dad was most unhelpful—his dad had no technical skills and tended to denigrate all electronics as work of clever but mis-guided attempts to get rich quickly.
Pincher became determined to use this modern medium to his distinct advantage and having saved up many weeks of paper deliver money he purchased a new good up to date computer.
And so began an extended phase of computational activity as Pincher began to get to grips with the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system.
It proved to be hard work and every day Pincher swore many times he would give up and dump the kit in the canal. It eventually dawned on him that there were no help books or systems that were useful in attaining his ambitions. But he persevered, and soon had spread sheets mastered at least to the extent of having his own banking account on file which currently showed a healthy balance of some eighty plus thousand pounds saved from his dad’s lifting activities.
However all this was a far cry from his ultimate ambition of siphoning off other people’s money into his own accounts.
But he was learning.
And learning fast.
At this point Pincher decided that he needed help. He had come to the end of the Microsoft guides without learning anything along the lines of accessing other people’s accounts. So he advertised for someone to help.
His advert was innocuous enough as it appeared in the local paper.
“Wanted.” it said “Someone to teach a willing pupil all about money transfers by the Internet. The pupil wishes to understand all about handling financial data to the level of dealing on an international scale.”
For a while nothing happened.
But then one day he intercepted an incoming e-mail which simply said “Re pupil—
Phone—.” and a number.
Which he did.
The voice on the other end said `I will help you for a 50 % share of all your profits.
Your `In Mail’ has an attachment which if you agree you must sign and send it back to me. Then I will send you a phone number and we will meet preferably at your place.’
Pincher was delighted—signed and waited.
Eventually a phone number arrived and the voice took his address and a meeting was arranged.
The door bell rang and there on the doorstep stood a tall well dressed gent.
`Mr Pincher I presume,’ he said.
Pincher was taken aback, he had not mentioned his knick-name in the advert.
`It’s OK,’ said the gent, `I always check up first—it saves a lot of mis-understandings in the future.’
Pincher invited the man in, and the man introduced himself as Ben Dover `Just call me Ben’, he said, which was of course not his real name.
And so began a long, hard and very technical schooling for Pincher, during the whole of which his father continued to pour scorn.
`Your wasting your life, you could be out there lifting wallets.’ This from a man who sent most of his life in prison. `Anyway, what’s this chap up to—why is he using you and not doing it himself?’ He asked. It was a question that was worrying Pincher.
When challenged Ben simply said that he was already known to he police and needed a front man. Pincher was temporarily mollified.
But now Pincher with Ben’s willing help was well on the road to ultimate success. It was when they had created a maze of interlinked accounts using Pinchers own limited funds, that Ben said that he thought the time was right to begin to learn how to access other peoples accounts.
He introduced Pincher to normally unavailable software like SQL injection to make databases reveal private information. And password finding suites.
To begin with they settled for simply obtaining data from other peoples accounts, which they chose by randomly picking names from the list illegally presented on the machine obtained files. Thus on Pincher’s computer there appeared a number of accounts belonging to other people. These were given coded reference numbers to identify them. They were also listed by the size of the final figure from which it could be seen that quite a few of these were worth further attention.
But then an over confident Pincher began, independently, to juggle some of these accounts simply as an exercise to see just how much money he could collect. Of course he used copied spread sheets not the originals which might have alerted the ever vigilant police.
In doing this he got excited and was carried away. a result of which several files got accidentally re-named and several others became wrongly labelled. As Pincher twiddled away the files became thoroughly mixed up.
When he saw the results of this activity Pincher got terribly excited and wanted to start to transfer some of these sizable amounts of money into his own account.
Ben the wiser and the more experienced recommended caution, but Pincher was now all fired up and ready to go.
* * *
Somewhere at a secret place the professionals in the police surveillance centre, where suspicious internet activity was investigated, were suddenly alerted to what appeared to be a curiously random movement of supposedly confidential files. This activity seemed to be centred about a privately owned machine held at the address of one H. P. Robinson, i.e. our Pincher. But so far there was no indication that any money had been lost from these extraneous accounts. But suspicion was aroused, so they set up a system of twenty-four hour semi automatic monitoring. The results of the first few day’s runs were the source of a mystery and much speculation. These accounts seemed to be interlinked in some subtle manner. The good police decided rightly that something was seriously amiss, or at least was about to be so. The sergeant in charge decided to give the problem all the attention, and all the time, from the whole team. His nose told him that trouble was afoot.
But after a further two weeks of close observation nothing untoward had transpired.
Nobody was complaining of having lost any money. The sergeant’s boss decide that it was not worth the whole team effort and instructed him to re-direct some of the manpower. Thus it was that the first serious moves were missed.
* * *
The day dawned when Ben decided that the time was right to execute the first of several real thefts.
So the two men shooed the women folk away, rolled up their sleeves and began.
If Ben was excited, Pincher was beside himself and full of confidence.
The sensible Ben suggested that they put together a detailed plan of action so as to avoid making mistakes and alerting the account owners. But Pincher argued strongly that this would waste time, so the idea was abandoned, and the work began.
They chose the biggest to start with. Firstly they moved the grand total of sixty five thousand pounds into a pre-prepared spare file. To this they then added another two accounts of ten and five thousand pounds to the same file.
Let us make it clear. Pincher now had dozens of accounts mostly fictitious but buried in this melee were Pincher’s real balance sheets listing some considerable real money, mostly accrued as was mentioned earlier from previous scams. Mixed up in all this were Pincher’s fictitious accounts also showing some considerable fictitious sums intended to act as decoys.
An anxious Ben asked `Are you sure you have got the right accounts.?’ It appeared to him that Pincher was just a little too slick on that key board.
Pincher’s fingers danced confidently over the keys.
`Of course I have,’ a somewhat indignant Pincher replied. `This file which now holds all that money does not exist in the outside world, but the money is real enough. So all we have to do is to move it into one of our own files.’
It was at this point that a pre-set warning beep sounded in the police HQ and alerted them to the fact that some serious money had changed accounts. So nine good officers started searching their machines and before long the files with the changed accounts appeared on their screens—`Bingo,’ shouted one excited officer.
But there was something strange about the transactions which began to puzzle the team.
They quickly identified the owner of the final account, and in whose name that sizable sum was held. And after discussing the issue at some length with the sergeant they gathered a team of their best men to arrest our Pincher.
Meanwhile Ben and Pincher were busy celebrating that one of their files now held an account whose total was over eighty thousand pounds.
But as a knock came to their door, their celebrations were a little premature.
Then as Pincher opened his front door to the posse, Ben was being stopped from leaving by the back door by two waiting constables.
All the equipment was seized and receipts issued.
The machines were then loaded into police vehicles and Pincher and Ben were asked ever so politely, to accompany the officers to the station `To help with their enquiries.’ they said.
Our pair climbed reluctantly into the police car and off to the nick they went.
* * *
Pincher and Ben were left to sweat it out in a cell with eaves dropping facilities.
`What on earth have you done ? I told you we should have had a plan.’ Argued Ben.
`It did not need a plan, I knew just what I was doing—the cops must have had my system bugged or something—they were there so quickly.’ Pincher complained. `And anyway we had better keep our traps shut.’
* * *
On a floor above their cell Pincher’s equipment was being given the once over by the police experts who after some considerable hours hard work they were still unable to fathom what had been done. They had clearly identified that there had been a theft of a considerable amount of money, but whose money had been stolen. Which of the many outside accounts had been raided?
A worried sergeant decided to confront the pair of suspects.
Firstly they questioned the men each separately.
Then the two police interviewers met to compare notes. After which they both concluded that they were thoroughly confused.
So they then re-interviewed the suspects but came the same puzzling conclusion—but this made no sense whatsoever. It was about mid-night when the sergeant did a final check on the prisoners and postponed any further investigative effort for the day. As a wet and grey day dawned the sergeant called in the city cops specialists who got together with Pincher’s equipment and by lunchtime they presented their conclusions in writing to the sergeant.
The expert’s conclusion was the same.
It made no sense.
The sergeant thanked the experts, and left to attended the chief’s call for him to report on the case.
* * *
`But it doesn’t make any sense,’ the chief concluded. Then after some thought he went over the charges to be levelled at our unfortunate pair. `I’m glad I will not be the one to present this in court he concluded.’ Grinning at the very uncomfortable sergeant.
* * *
At the nick every single TV screen was made available such was the interest being shown.
There followed a pause—then—
`Welcome everybody,’ announced the sergeant when finally he was sitting in the cell with the two suspects who had a solicitor present. `Then let us begin.’
`Please state your names,’ nice and loud for the machine please.’
`Pincher Robinson, 125 Hard Case Drive’
`Pincher Robinson you are charged with manipulating files of cash accounts and storing them on your own computer, how do you plead—guilty or not guilty ?’
Pincher consulted with his solicitor, then `Guilty,’ said Pincher
The self same charges were then levelled at Ben, who also pleaded guilty.
To save money Ben had agreed to use Pincher’s man for a reduced fee.
They all trooped out of the cell leaving the two men awaiting their release on police bail as had been agreed.
But the solicitor was puzzled, something was not right. His two clients had asked him to find out what was bothering everyone and to report back to them. Thus after he had discussed the issue with the police chief, the solicitor was let into the cell with our two men awaiting release.
`Well?’ Said the solicitor—`What is the problem?’
Pincher looked at Ben who just shrugged. He was clearly out of his depth.
`The problem is,’ said Pincher `Why are we not being charged with theft?’
The solicitor held back his laughter with difficulty.
`British law says that you can’t be charged with stealing your own money.’ He said.
Our two would be criminals gaped.
The solicitor could not suppress a grin.
`Yes it is true—the file you took the money from was your own. It took some effort to establish this, but the experts did it. You stole eighty five thousand pounds from yourselves. Congratulations—the press will have a field day. And I must say that I am very much looking forward to your time in court.’
JML
17/6/2011