Scotland Yard’s Computer Crime Unit is cash-strapped but is still catching the crooks, writes Bill Goodwin. Scotland Yard’s computer crime unit does not hit the headlines very often, but behind the scenes, its small, highly qualified team of detectives, can lay claim to having cracked some of the UK’s most important computer crime cases. The unit, formed in 1984, is the country’s first computer crime unit. Its victories include the prosecution of the Black Baron, responsible for the devastating Pathogen and Queeq viruses, and the arrest of the Datastream Cowboy, a teenager who hacked his way through US military systems in the late 1990s. More recently the unit won a commendation for the prosecution of Simon Vallor, the 22-year-old Welsh disc jockey, sentenced to two years for writing the Gokar, Redisi and Admirer viruses – the longest sentence ever given to a virus writer. Operating from a brown office block in Buckingham Gate, London, the computer crime unit is part of Scotland Yard’s specialist crime directorate (SCD6), which focuses on activities as diverse as wildlife crime, money laundering, stolen vehicles and public order intelligence, providing them with advice and forensic services. Full Story
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