A Berliner has been convicted of blackmail by the British National Health Service (NHS). He had threatened to bomb a hospital if he did not receive a ransom of £ 10million in bitcoin.
Emil Apreda – previously identified as Emil A, due to German law – is a 33-year-old Italian residing in Berlin, Germany, with a background in computer science.
On Friday, the president of the Berlin Criminal Court sentenced the defendant to three years in prison.
Email blackmail
Emil Apreda is accused of sending threatening emails to the NHS between April and June 2020, in which he threatened to detonate a bomb at an unspecified hospital in the UK, if he did not receive £ 10million (around 11,600 euros) in cryptocurrency.
Nigel Leary, deputy director of the national unit for the fight against cybercrime of the British National Crime Agency (NCA), said last Thursday in a briefing that his threats “have intensified” over a period of six weeks.
The first email was sent on April 25, during the first lockdown in the UK. The NHS was his first target. Emil Apreda then threatened to drop off an “explosives package” in a hospital if his demands were not met. Hours later, the NCA received the same threatening email.
The accused took advantage of the social and health context
Emil Apreda took advantage of world events, capitalizing not only on the Covid-19 pandemic, but also on the Black Lives Matter movements. The criminal threatened to plant explosives during demonstrations linked to this movement. He is also said to have threatened the safety of MPs during the commemoration of the assassination of Labor MP Jo Cox.
Ultimately, the NCA believes that these threats were an attempt at “social engineering” intended to “elicit the desired response,” that is, a payment in cryptocurrency. The agency specifies that it has no reason to believe that the blackmailer had access to explosives.
The NHS did not respond to blackmail attempts.
Hospitals were particularly vulnerable during containment
Prosecutors say the “extortion attempt” continued until his arrest in June. The arrest was the result of collaboration between the British intelligence services and their foreign partners, leading to the obtaining of a warrant to force entry into the home of the suspect. Emil Apreda’s trial began on December 11 in Germany. His conviction has now been passed, but he has been released on bail until the decision is ratified.
The NCA took the threat very seriously: Nigel Leary notes that as the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing, there was “deep and heightened vulnerability” in the medical system.
Hospitals, by their nature, are open spaces. And, during the first lockdown, they were one of the few places where there were massive gatherings of people. “We had to intervene fairly quickly and make sure that everything that could be done was done,” comments Nigel Leary, who adds that “this did not mean that people should not be dissuaded from seeking medical treatment”.
Membership of an extreme right-wing group
This investigation required a “dynamic and significant response”, according to the agency. The risk became even greater when Emil Apreda claimed he was part of Combat 18. Although this organization is not recognized as a terrorist in the UK, it remains a far-right group with extremist tendencies.
Emil Apreda was not extradited, but he reportedly faced “similar” charges in the UK, according to the NCA.
Last June, Matthew Wain, a YouTuber, was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison. He had posted a video of him threatening to plant a bomb and wishing NHS staff at Birmingham Hospital to ‘die of the coronavirus’. The 31-year-old went on to explain that this online rant was not nothing more than an “empty threat”, because he was not satisfied with his time in this hospital.
Source : ZDNet.com
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