DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [72]
After hopping on the Jubilee Line into town, JiLsi changed onto the Piccadilly at Green Park before finally getting out at Leicester Square, but, as so many people do at that station, he used the wrong exit and had to double-back towards the square itself.
His heart froze: Mr Androgyny was right there. And going across Leicester Square, packed with tourists and street artists, Renu almost bumped into Mr Long Hair. There was no doubt about it now – he was under serious surveillance.
He dived into a Chinese restaurant and wolfed down some lunch as he considered his options. He emerged into the sunlight before slipping down St Martin’s Street, the lane that narrows into a passageway alongside the National Gallery before arriving at Trafalgar Square.
Milling around Nelson’s Column, visitors were admiring the extraordinary twelve-foot-high statue that occupied the Fourth Plinth, where exhibits are rotated every eighteen months or so. Alison Lapper Pregnant depicted the eponymous British artist naked and with child. Ms Lapper had been born without arms, and the decision to mount the statue caused a great deal of fuss at the time. It drew in the crowds and, as Renu made his way through a tidal wave of tourists, his minders were buffeted behind him. He jumped on the first available bus and made his way upstairs. As it turned left into St Martin’s Lane, he looked down from the upper deck and caught a glimpse of both Mr Androgyny and Mr Long Hair, looking desperately around in search of their vanished quarry.
Renu disappeared. But he wasn’t the only one – JiLsi had made his last-ever posting on the Internet.
A couple of weeks later Renukanth was heading towards one of several properties, which, if he didn’t own, he had certainly taken out a mortgage on. He had almost reached the house, which lay slap bang under the landing path for Heathrow Airport, when his phone rang. It was his mate who lived there, warning Renu to stay away. The police had just raided the house and were brandishing a warrant for his arrest.
SOCA’s lead officer in the JiLsi investigation, Mick Jameson, had already visited Renu’s main address in Coniston Gardens, and a few others as well. Apart from his work as JiLsi on DarkMarket, the Sri Lankan was also a serial mortgage fraudster. He had repeatedly lied about his professional and financial circumstances in an effort to secure funds from lenders on a variety of properties in north, west and south London. Britain was not subject to the same sub-prime frenzy that had seized the financial industry in the US. Nonetheless, the notorious system of self-certification, whereby your word was considered sufficient proof as to your income, combined with the practice of lending up to five times an applicant’s salary (in more sober times, this figure was never more than three) meant that mortgage fraud was relatively easy in the UK. So competitive was the market that turning a blind eye had become best practice in the banking industry.
When the phone call came, though, Renu was more concerned to negotiate the deep waters into which he had swum than to consider the fine print of his various scams. He decided on the spot to go underground. For three weeks he slept rough, avoiding any of the addresses that he assumed were now under some form of surveillance. When he received the tip-off about the police raid he had about £500 with him.
Life had been frenetic and risky before, but Renu had always enjoyed his slightly spook-like existence: never staying long at a single address, surreptitiously passing memory sticks to shady-looking contacts and, of course, being lauded as a master of the carding sites, without anyone knowing who he was. At first, he thought dossing down in cardboard boxes under the arches with a group of alcoholics would contribute to that mystique. But as the money ran out and his lifestyle deteriorated to the point where it was almost hand-to-mouth, Renukanth Subramaniam