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Fracking won’t survive, says Jane Thomas, campaigner for Friends of the Earth organization. And the US success in the field can’t be repeated due to smaller territories and lower general capacities, she told RT.

RT: On one hand, hydraulic fracking [a technique in which toxic chemicals are lowered into kilometer-deep holes drilled in the ground to isolate gas and oil from shale] clearly presents some environmental problems and dangers. On the other, it might be economically profitable to actually look at this source of energy. How can you reconcile these two conflicting interests? 

Jane Thomas: I think it’s interesting what you say about economically profitable, so the first challenge we would say back at the government is, “Economically profitable for whom?” It’s quite clear in the UK context, and indeed in the European context, that the profits are more than likely to go to shareholders and to organizations like Cuadrilla. I think the basic issue for us is that you cannot replicate what’s happening in the United States with what’s happening over here. They’ve been fracking for 20 years, they’ve got drills - 2,500 drills. We’ve got 72 drills between the whole of Europe. So you cannot extract at all the sort of levels that they are being able to extract in America. 

RT: On the other hand, this will create a lot of jobs and the possibility to employ people. 

JT: Where you’re more likely to get more jobs is in the renewable sector, and one of the things we think has been really missing from this whole debate is government stepping up to the plate. This is the government who said it was going to be the greenest government ever -- and actually put their money where their mouth is and really invest in renewables. For example, in a place called Hull, which is on the east coast of Britain, they’ve got a potential project that the chamber of commerce projects could bring 10,000 jobs to a much-needed, deprived part of the country. And that’s in an offshore wind farm. We’ve seen the Atlantic Array possibly coming on stream. The London Array just opened. We’ve got a massive wind farm in Sussex. Those are the one bringing real, tangible jobs. 

RT: From the economic perspective, that might not be something attractive to invest in, as there has been some research and estimates. But speaking about shale gas extraction, what would Britain stand to gain if it doesn’t go ahead with all the projects? 

JT: The thing is, there aren’t that many projects in the pipeline. There’s been exploratory drilling in Lancashire, and they’re not even fracking here in Balcombe, they’re doing some exploration on oil and gas. So we don’t know exactly, there’s some wild estimates there. But the reality is the industry leaders themselves say they wouldn’t be able to have any extraction of any merit until 2021 or 2022. So there’s no silver bullet here and there’s certainly no short-term solution. And there’s no evidence it’s going to bring prices down for the consumer. 

RT: Not so long ago, we heard of the first arrest. People are protesting the village of Balcombe there. What is this a sign of? Is this a sign of the government siding with businesses instead of its citizens and not listening to their concerns? 

JT: I think it’s a number of things. We have something going through parliament now called the Energy Bill, which has really attracted a lot of debate about our future energy needs and, for people like ourselves, green organizations, it’s given us an opportunity to say, “Actually, we need to be really, really concerned about emissions, about meeting our international obligations in terms of carbon reduction and fracking is just going to make this worse.” So there’s a lot of debate about energy. There are some quite interesting things happening in Balcombe, which is that people really haven’t felt that they have had a proper voice through the planning system, haven’t had their voice heard through the political system, and now they’re using their own voice and mobilizing in a way that’s increasingly powerful.

RT: How effective could these protests be? In other words, can they actually stop fracking from happening? 

JT: I think it adds to the whole debate. It’s interesting, this is a conservative constituency. Francis Maude is a minister in this government, and so it’s really happening on the government’s backdoor. So they’re having to take notice of what’s going on. But I think the thing that will really stop this is us being able to make the case that this doesn’t meet our future energy needs, it is incredibly damaging for the environment of the people that live in those communities, and it will certainly increase our emissions. 

I think that will stop it, because if you’re a shareholder, if you’re an investor, you have to think of the long-term prospects, and the long-term prospects aren’t in fracking. You certainly don’t want to go into an area where you’re going to get this sort of level of community anger, and you certainly want to know you’re there for a long time. And, actually, on both things, shale doesn’t answer the question. 

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Cases of cyber blackmail are less prominent than cyberbullying but can have the same devastating impact on victims. Arrests have been made over online blackmailing attempts where hackers have corrupted the websites of large companies and demanded money, but individual cases are less well known.

Blackmailers threaten to send embarrassing or incriminating images of someone which have been captured through a webcam to friends, family or colleagues unless money is paid, but because of the nature of cases they are rarely reported.

One children's charity said Daniel Perry's death is the first time it has come across cyber blackmailing and called for more education for young people. NSPCC policy analyst Claire Lilley said: "We've seen plenty of cases coming through ChildLine where children are experiencing serious cyberbullying at the hands of their peers and also being groomed by sexual predators, but this is the first time we have really seen extortion happening, via the internet, of a young person.

"Children and young people love the internet to learn, explore and connect with people like them all over the world. But it's about teaching them that not everyone is who they say they are and teaching them how to respect one another in terms of their behaviour online."

Research published last year exploring dating site scams, which have typically persuaded victims to send money, shows scammers are now focusing more on social networking sites - blackmailing victims with photos, videos and records of explicit or incriminating chats.

The research by Professor Monica Whitty of the University of Leicester confirmed the profound psychological impact on victims, describing the "double hit" experienced by victims through loss of money and romantic prospect.

Other victims reported missing the relationship even when they knew it was a scam, with heterosexual men expressing feelings of shame that they felt emotionally attached to someone revealed to be male.

"Awareness might be a preventive measure, but one of the problems is that victims had told that they were being scammed and it didn't stop them, so it has to be a message that individuals buy into," said Whitty. Her research also found that victims were from all age groups, but only slightly more likely to be male.

An estimated 230,000 people in the UK had fallen victim, though police believe that many victims do not come forward, either through embarrassment or hope the "romance" will turn out to be real. The Scam Survivors website has a rogues' gallery of scam profile pictures alongside the perpetrators, who are generally rather less glamorous.

According to the victims posting on Scam Survivors, scammers are using a huge range of sites and apps to find victims, from Facebook, Skype and Chatroulette to niche adult chat and dating sites, its listings of the curious and the lonely offering rich pickings for scammers.

Advice is always the same for victims of online blackmail: do not give them any money. Block them from your contacts and change your settings to block unknown users. Report abuse to the service provider and contact the police.

Social media are becoming more transient, with older posts harder to dig out of archives and popular apps like Snapchat allowing messages to self-destruct after a few seconds. But there are now even apps specifically for saving Snapchat photos and videos.

BROOKLYN, NY—Earlier today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested six men in New York, Arizona, New Jersey, Florida, and California for engaging in an international fraud conspiracy that spanned the globe from North America to Europe and Asia. A seventh defendant was also arrested today on a provisional arrest warrant in Ontario, Canada. The arrests resulted from an indictment charging nine defendants with 24 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, and false personation of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees in connection with the sale of securities and conspiracy (the investigation showed that the identities used were fictitious and that no IRS employees were involved in the scheme). As set forth in court filings, the defendants masterminded securities fraud and advance fee schemes that victimized investors in approximately 35 nations and generated more than $140 million through various brokerage and bank accounts under their control. To uncover the international aspects of the scheme and gather evidence, the FBI used wiretaps in the United States and undercover agents in foreign countries.

The indictment and arrests are the result of one of the largest international penny stock investigations ever conducted by the Department of Justice and the FBI and mark the unveiling of a multi-year, ongoing investigation, which included significant assistance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as well as from other U.S. law enforcement agencies and law enforcement authorities in England, as well as assistance from Thailand and China.

The defendants are charged in two separate but interrelated schemes. According to the indictment, the defendants first engaged in an international "pump and dump" scheme during which they fraudulently "pumped up" the share price of worthless penny stocks and then "dumped" billions of shares of those stocks by unloading them on unsuspecting victim investors across the globe. Second, the defendants operated boiler rooms in at least four countries that induced investors in penny stocks, including many of the same victims from the pump and dump scheme, to pay advance fees that the defendants promised would enable the victim-investors to sell their penny stocks and recover losses that they incurred. In reality, the defendants simply stole the fees without providing any services, fraudulently extracting millions of additional dollars from their victims.

The charges and arrests were announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; George Venizelos, Assistant Director in Charge, FBI, New York Field Office; Toni Weirauch, Special Agent in -Charge, IRS, Criminal Investigation, New York; James C. Spero, Special Agent in Charge, Homeland Security Investigations, Department of Homeland Security, Buffalo; and Robert O’Malley, Special Agent in Charge, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

The Pump and Dump Scheme

As alleged in the indictment, defendants Sandy Winick, Gary Kershner, Joseph Manfredonia, Cort Poyner, Songkram Roy Shachaisere, and William Seals orchestrated one of the largest international penny stock frauds in history. First, the defendants gained controlling interests of huge quantities of worthless stock in 11 public companies known in the industry as "file cabinet businesses"—thinly traded companies with minimal assets and non-existent business operations, which in many cases were mere shell companies. They then pumped up the share prices of the companies’ stock by engaging in fraudulent and illegal sales campaigns, which included distributing false press releases, announcing non-existent business ventures and fake mergers, posting false information on social media sites and bribing stock promoters and brokers.

These efforts fraudulently inflated share prices so that the pump and dump defendants could trade billions of shares of penny stocks that they owned and controlled at a profit, ultimately generating more than $120 million worth of fraudulent stock sales in accounts under their control. As a result of the defendants’ efforts, investors in 35 countries were defrauded in connection with their purchase of the companies’ stock.

To avoid detection, the defendants, many of whom operated from outside the United States, were often careful to use “throwaway phones.” In fact, defendant Poyner was intercepted on a wire communication reminding others in the scheme to use such mobile devices to avoid being caught. The defendants also knew that they should not draw attention to their illegal trading scheme. For example, defendant Winick boasted about the superiority of the charged scheme compared to another more obvious scam, stating, “That deal is obviously a pump and dump. We know enough to be subtle.”

The Advance Fee Scheme

As the indictment alleges, defendants Winick, Gregory Curry, Kolt Curry, and Gregory Ellis perpetrated a second scheme in which they fraudulently induced penny stock victims to pay advance fees, on the promise that the victims would then either be able to sell their securities to other waiting investors or join lawsuits to reclaim their losses. In reality, the advance fees were nothing more than a con, as neither the investors nor the lawsuits existed. To hoodwink the penny stock owners, the advance fee defendants invented fake trading companies and a fake law firm and then posed as employees of those entities while soliciting advance fees from the penny stock victims.

To facilitate the scheme, the defendants established boiler rooms or call centers from which members of the conspiracy would solicit advance fees from the unsuspecting penny stock victims. The call centers were located in various locales around the world, including Canada, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Recently, the defendants began planning to open a new call center in Brooklyn, New York. Some of the victims were told that they either needed to pay the advance fee to remove restrictions that were placed upon their penny stock, which prevented the victims from selling their stock in the market, or to join investors in a pending or anticipated lawsuit to recover losses that they incurred while owning the penny stock. Victims were then told that the advance fees were needed to convert the warrants of their stocks to a saleable security. In several instances, the advance fee defendants even pretended to be IRS employees collecting a bogus advance tax from victim investors before they could unload their penny stocks (the investigation showed that the identities used were fictitious and that no IRS employees were involved in the scheme). The victims were directed to send payment of the advance fees to banks around the world, including bank accounts in New York City. The fraud proceeds were then transferred through a funds transfer network located in Getzville, New York, to an account maintained in Beirut, Lebanon. Ultimately, these defendants generated more than $20 million in fraudulently obtained advance fees.

Defendant Kolt Curry described the advance fee scheme in the following way over an intercepted wire communication: “I would say that 100 percent of these stocks are like uh pink uh...just dumps...so...ya know they’re totally, they’re like, so a lot of these guys are dying...to get rid of this crap....The money is good, it’s easy. It’s easy money. Definitely easy money, and it’s good money.” In fact, while bragging about his prowess as a fraudster, defendant Kolt Curry further stated, “I had a guy send me a million dollars over one phone call....He actually sent me almost two million dollars over the period of the hit....I guess in the industry they coin it as a smash and grab.” As for the group’s recent plans to open a call center in Brooklyn, New York, defendant Kolt Curry said, “I tell you what man...hitting the Americans would be like taking money from a baby.”