DARKMARKET

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 extraor- dinary 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.