Dean Poot: Cyber attacker’s shocking recordings threatening police and public aired
Bizarre recordings that clogged Victoria Police stations with vile threats and harassed members of the public have been aired.
A Victorian man bombarded police phone systems with menacing calls and harassed thousands of strangers with automated abusive messages telling them to “drive a pencil in your ear”.
Bendigo man Dean Poot was behind the shocking cyber attack and was sentenced to time served – 307 days – after pleading guilty to 11 charges, including unauthorised impairment of electronic communication.
Audio recordings released by the County Court of Victoria on Tuesday revealed the vile messages police and members of the public received.
Police stations across Victoria endured thousands of vile calls and had to deal with confused and occasionally angry members of the public.
The recorded abusive messages included an aggressive man yelling “f***ing twat” and “drive a pencil in your ear and smash it with me hand”.
In one recording released, a policewoman from Collingwood station told a woman who received a missed call it was a “phone glitch”.
“You can disregard that call,” she tells the woman on the line before an automated tone interrupts.
“This is not the police, do not listen to them, they are international scammers,” the automated tone said.
“Oh my god you’re a scammer,” the woman yells.
Members of the public were subjected to vile abuse, including; “I have never rung your number you stupid little imbecile.”
The act prevented police officers from making or receiving legitimate phone calls and caused hours of havoc for officers as the lines were flooded with the calls, the court was previously told.
Poot created a network to conduct the telephone attacks and overwhelm the phone system of various police stations using false identifying information in October 2018, according to prosecutors.
He used fake emails, identities and stolen credit card information to buy the technology and services before launching the cyber attack.
More than 10,000 people received a phone call from an unknown number and were subjected to vile abuse before the call was automatically diverted to a police station, overwhelming its phone network.
Poot used software to automate calls to mobile phone numbers that disconnected before they were answered and then followed up with an SMS pleading for help between January and February 2019.
The texts read: “Please call me back right away. Its an Emergency I need your help!” and “Call back right away, I need urgent help”
The network received more than 53,000 calls from people. It made more than 127,000 outbound calls with more than 23,000 texts sent out, according to a prosecution summary.
Poot also pleaded guilty to a “phishing” scam where he stole credit card information using a website that imitated the Post BillPay website between November 2017 and June 2019.
Other charges he pleaded guilty to included possession or control of a thing with intent to dishonestly obtain or deal in personal financial information, use a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence, dishonestly obtaining or dealing in personal information and others.
The 30-year-old was nabbed in June 2019 when police raided his home.