Students are turning to cyber-crime to support themselves, a new police sting shutting down a dark web cyber syndicate has revealed.

Police have shut down a site called LabHost where students could purchase cyber fraud capabilities to create realistic websites from household brands, including banks, to trick victims across the globe. In the UK, LabHost enabled the targeting of 70,000 victims.

A total of 37 suspects were arrested in connection with the fraud site, including the alleged ringmaster, and the site itself was disrupted as part of the takedown.

Victims ranged typically between 25 to 44, and typically entered sensitive information like usernames, passwords, and emails, which could be used to steal money or sold on the dark web.

The site, established in 2021, quickly gained traction, and by 2024, more than 40,000 fraudulent sites had been created and 2,000 users were registered and paying a monthly subscription fee for the services.

Those subscribing to the ‘worldwide membership,’ meaning they could target victims internationally, paid between £200 and £300 a month. The site was advertised as a “one-stop-shop for phishing,” making it easy for users to create fraudulent websites and trick their victims.

The user-friendly site even had tutorial videos for how to commit fraud using its services, even offering customer service if any problems with the software occurred.

In total, the site received just under £1m in payments from criminal users, but it is uncertain how much users made from targeting individuals with the site’s services. 800 users received a notification from the Police saying that the authorities know who they are and how much they have paid into LabHost.

With 70,000 individual UK victims alone, the site has amassed a massive 480,000 card numbers, 64,000 PIN numbers, and more than one million passwords globally.

“Online fraudsters think they can act with impunity. They believe they can hide behind digital identities and platforms such as LabHost and have absolute confidence these sites are impenetrable by policing, ” Dame Lynne Owens, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service said.

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“But this operation and others over the last year show how law enforcement worldwide can, and will, come together with one another and private sector partners to dismantle international fraud networks at source. Our approach is to be more precise and targeted with a clear focus on those enabling online fraud to be carried out on an international scale.”

Still, the LabHost shutdown represents just a small fraction of online fraud occurring, as pressure mounts for law enforcement to shut down the scourge of black market websites offering fraud-as-a-service proliferating online.