3

2003 was the year that Adewale Taiwo received his BSc in chemical engineering from the University of Lagos. The son of a university lecturer and a civil servant, Adewale, who was tall and striking, had grown into an articulate and measured young man with a promising future in industry or academia. By Nigerian standards, the family was comfortably off and they had relatives in London able to assist Adewale when he explored the possibility of continuing his education in the United Kingdom.

This was also the year that he created his alter ego, Fred Brown of Oldham in Lancashire. Although Adewale had never yet been to England, he decided in advance to create this veritable Mr Hyde of the cyber world. It was Fred Brown who established the yahoo newsgroup on bank fraud.

Before long Fred Brown was also posting adverts on the Internet, using such sites as the Hacker Magazine, Alt 2600 or UK Finance:

OPPORTUNITY: A business opportunity has arisen for people employed in High Street banks or people who have family or friends working for banks to go into partnership. Banks include HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland but others will be considered. Please reply to Fred B Brown on yahoo, icq or Safemail.

The messaging programs icq (derived from I Seek You) and the older IRC (Internet Relay Chat) are tools beloved of hackers and crackers, as criminal hackers are sometimes known. They are instant messaging services on which you can chat to one or more people.