
Men who exchanged self-loading pistol and ammunition jailed
Specialist firearms officers made the gun safe before seizing it, along with Parker's mobile phone. His prior movements were established and Rankin was arrested at his home and had his phone seized. In six days from 1 July, analysis of the phones showed the men had exchanged 14 calls and texts. The phone linked to Parker showed that he travelled to Rankin's home on the day of the arrest and was captured on CCTV arriving without a bag. Forty-five minutes later he left the property with the bag containing the weapon.
At Huntingdon Law Courts on Monday, Parker was jailed for seven and a half years after admitting possession of a prohibited firearm and possession of ammunition for a firearm without a certificate. At the same hearing, Rankin was jailed for five years and two months after pleading guilty to selling a prohibited weapon and selling ammunition to a person who did not hold a firearm certificate. Det Sgt Tustin-Reeves said: "Weapons like this have no place in the hands of the public and Cambridgeshire is a safer place with it destroyed."
Follow Peterborough news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Sun
12 minutes ago
- The Sun
Mum issues scary warning after revealing way stranger tried to ‘drug' her on the train when she was alone with her baby
A MUM has shared an urgent warning about the horrific new way criminals are trying to drug women on public transport. Aysin Cilek, 22, was travelling on a train to Birmingham 's Moor Street last week with her daughter when the alleged incident took place. 4 4 The mum-of-one says she was approached by a stranger who she now believes was trying to drug her with Devil's Breath. The substance, which is also known as scopolamine, has been dubbed the 'world's scariest drug.' Victims say it puts them in a zombie-like state and can make you confused and easy to manipulate, while others say it's nothing but a myth. But Aysin claims a man tried to drug her with it while travelling with her baby daughter, Neveah. Taking to social media, she said: "Guys, the scariest thing happened to me today and I am literally just posting this for awareness, for other people, for other mums. Please be careful." Aysin said she got on the train and 'everything was fine' until a 'dodgy looking' man joined her carriage. She added: "Just as we were getting to the next stop, he comes over and he's like 'hi'. He passes me a stamp but it's obviously not a stamp - it literally looks like an acid tab. "But I wasn't thinking straight. He passes me this thing and I take it off him. I thought he was trying to sell me something. And he goes 'Can you put my stamp on my letter?'" Aysin initially agreed to help him out but soon backed out when he asked her to 'lick it.' She said the man told her 'you need to lick it [the 'stamp']. You need to get it wet to stick it on there'. 4 Ket had me peeing every 2 seconds Later on, she claims he may have had more sinister intentions. She continued: "The 'letter' wasn't even a letter, it was a piece of paper. "This guy was definitely trying to drug me. It was just me and Nevaeh. I'm actually getting teary thinking about it. If I was that stupid to just lick the stamp and put it on, I could have been drugged, and Neveah could have been gone. "This is serious guys, you need to be so careful when you're out and about. I would never ever have imagined something like that would happen to me. I've never been so scared in my life." To make things even worse, the man kept peering into her pram, saying 'don't wake the baby'. Now, the mum says she won't be getting on public transport alone again and is afraid to leave her own house. She says she reported the incident to the British Transport Police and enquiries are ongoing. A spokesperson for the police confirmed to the MailOnline that a complaint was made. The clip quickly went viral on her TikTok account @ aysincilek2 with over 3 million views and people were quick to share their thoughts. One person wrote: "This is actually so awful. Please report this. I've never heard of devil's breath ever! I am so glad you and your baby are okay." Another commented: "This is so scary for people, especially who aren't aware of devil's breath. I'm so sorry that this happened to you." "Stop being 'nice' to strange men you come across in the street. Ignore them and keep walking, especially if you're with your child," penned a third. What is Devil's Breath? REPORTS of the Devil's Breath drug have been seen across South American, Europe and even in the UK. Some people may take the drug on purpose for a "dream-like state" it can induce, mistakenly thinking it will be like mainstream hallucinogens like LSD. But Devil's Breath hallucinations tend to be far more disturbing and disjointed, often manifesting as nightmarish visions or confusing scenarios that blur the lines of reality. It may also be taken by mistake due to its close resemblance to cocaine. The correct dosage of the drug is notoriously hard to pin down, and even a slight miscalculation can lead to an overdose. This can lead to respiratory failure, acute psychosis and even death. Symptoms may include dry mouth, difficulty speaking, lethargy, hallucinations, rapid heartbeat and disorientation. Source: The UKAT Group Meanwhile a fourth said: "Do not take things that have been offered to you that's all I say." "Legitimately never heard of this before this video so thank you for raising awareness!' claimed a fifth Someone else added: "Scary, and worse still. If it was a grandparent might not have thought twice as we are old school and stamps always used to be licked." 4


Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'Greedy' National Crime Agency officer jailed after stealing £4.4 million in bitcoin from dark web drug dealer a 'first of its kind case', specialist prosecutor tells Mail podcast
A former National Crime Agency employee has 'destroyed his good life and career' after being jailed for stealing 50 Bitcoin from a dark web drug dealer, a prosecutor has told an exclusive Mail podcast. Paul Chowles, 42, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for stealing Bitcoin now worth £4.4 million from a drug dealer who was under investigation in 2017. Drug dealer Thomas White, who operated a dark web marketplace known as 'Silk Road 2.0' from his Liverpool home, alerted police to Chowles after telling investigators that proceeds from his criminal enterprise had gone missing. Chowles's theft went undetected for five years as he used his expertise in cybercrime to conceal his ill-gotten gains. Speaking to the Mail's Trial Plus podcast, specialist prosecutor Alex Johnson, who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service against Chowles, described why the case is truly 'a first of its kind.' Johnson said: 'When the Bitcoin was stolen in 2017, it was worth around £59,000. During the investigation, the value of Bitcoin exploded. 'The stolen Bitcoin would now be worth in excess of £4 million. An interesting aspect of the case was that Chowles was able to spend more money than he had stolen because the value of it went up during the time it was in his possession. 'Chowles was extremely calculated in the way he dealt with the stolen Bitcoin. He moved it into a system on the dark web called the Bitcoin fog. 'It was a way criminals could effectively wash dirty Bitcoin and send it back to themselves as clean Bitcoin. 'Merseyside police had to carry out an extremely diligent investigation to locate the Bitcoin, including hiring an expert to locate every transaction within the fog… this showed the Bitcoin being transferred into an account which could be linked unequivocally to Chowles.' Chowles was not only strategic in concealing the Bitcoin's transfer, but also careful in how he spent the stolen money. He avoided 'flashy' purchases, using his newfound wealth to buy groceries and home supplies. 'Chowles spent the money on fairly routine things', Johnson told the podcast. 'Working through his bank statements showed purchases at Asda, Sainsburys, Screw Fix and visits to local pubs and restaurants. 'He was careful – no holidays to the Bahamas or Ferraris or anything like that. Just day to day spending. 'Chowles used the stolen Bitcoin for more than 900 transactions and was able to carry out debit card and bank transfers of just under £80,000.' The specialist prosecutor emphasised that the lengthy prison sentence sends a strong message to potential Bitcoin criminals. 'At the end of the day, Chowles is a greedy and dishonest officer who decided he would breach public trust and steal something he should have been protecting', Johnson said. 'He's a family man. He lives with his partner… he really has destroyed what was a good career and a good life. 'I think for him to go to prison at this stage of his life must be real deterrent for anyboy else who might be looking at what's happened and considering doing the same thing.' Chowles was able to get hold of White's Bitcoin by accessing one of several USB drives containing the digital currency that had been seized from White's address. White operated online under the alias, 'Dread Pirate Roberts', a reference to the 1987 fantasy film The Princess Bride. In the film, the name Dread Pirate Roberts is passed down through generations of fearsome pirates, when their last leader retires. The USB drive containing the Bitcoin was titled 'Dread Pirate Roberts retirement fund', which led Johnson to make an amusing observation. 'Chowles considered this his retirement fund – and in doing so, became the new Dread Pirate Roberts!'


Daily Mail
12 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'Hipster grifter' scammer who swindled 'gullible' victims reveals her cunning methods
A woman who swindled tens of thousands of dollars out of men before being outed as a fugitive reveals the methods and motivations behind her crimes. Kari Ferrell, 37, who featured on the What It Was Like podcast, became known as the 'Hipster Grifter' after being exposed for her writing of bad checks and conning trust-fund babies in Manhattan. Among her untruths, she also claimed to be suffering from terminal cancer, and lied to some of her marks about being pregnant and needing an abortion - she even lied on her resume in order to land a job at Vice magazine. Kari of New York, who's been married to her husband Elliot Ensor for 13 years, was born in South Korea in 1987. She was adopted by an American family, who moved to Salt Lake City in Utah - which she described on the podcast as 'Mormon Mecca' - when she was two-years-old. In her memoirs You'll Never Believe Me: A Life Of Lies, Second Tries, And Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist, which was published earlier this year, Kari said how the Mormon church gave her a 'masterclass in the art of manipulation'. She said: 'I saw just how gullible people are, and how they will believe anything and everything.' As one of only two Asian people in her school, Kari struggled with finding a sense of identity, and 'would bounce from friend group to friend group [...] just constantly trying to be the person that I thought everyone else needed'. During her adolescence, she would shoplift, and her social circle started the 'scumbag Olympics', where they would set out to steal certain items. The 'winner' of the competition would then be given all of the things that had been purloined by the group. Kari's crimes escalated when she swindled friends out of money, carried out her first con by stealing $500 from her trusting boyfriend when she was 18, and she used the same ruse on some of her friends. She would tell people that she was having issues with her bank and couldn't take money out of the cash machine, but she was able to write checks. Kari would write one and then ask the person to cash it after revealing that she'd pay them back and give them an additional $100 - and take them for dinner. She said on the podcast: 'It began with people who actually wanted to help me, because they actually cared about me, because they were my actual friends. 'They were the people who never considered that I would ever be lying to them when I'm, you know, spouting this ridiculous story about my bank.' According to Kari, she 'ran [herself] out of Utah', after word spread that she was conning people, and no one wanted anything to do with her. She estimated that in Utah, she swindled 'five to six' people out of around $2,000. However, before getting out of town, she was arrested and put behind bars for 'a very brief stint', but after posting bail, she skipped town, moving to NYC to 'become who [she] had always wanted to be'. She said: 'This was not a scammer, not a criminal - [rather] just a person who gets to express themselves and immerse themselves in culture.' Catch he if you can: After leaving Utah while on bail, Kari was put on a 'most wanted' list, which she was unaware of for some time Kari didn't plan to write more bad checks, however, getting a job and earning money was more difficult than she had anticipated, and she soon found herself needing money, which made her fall back into her bad ways. Explaining how she carried out a con, she revealed that she would go out to a bar, choose a mark, and then write a note which she'd slide over to that person. The note would say 'something silly', like 'I want you to give me a massage - from the inside'. Some of her marks would end up being one-night stands, she would develop an ongoing relationship with others and then stealing from them when she went to their homes, including an iPod, which had been gifted as a graduation present, loose cash that was lying around, and an expensive camera. Kari said: 'What I remember was how I was like, "Wow, this person has so many things that they never asked me about any of the stuff that I've taken." 'It was never like, "Oh, I lost my iPod but I do remember it being here, and I remember you being here that same time".' Kari said she still wondered whether that was because they trusted her or because 'they just had so many things they just didn't care, or they didn't think about it or they could just buy another one'. As a result, she started to think of herself as 'a kind of f***ed up vigilante type', and 'Robin Hood-esque' - a character her fans would later ascribe to her after her story went public. In 2009, after falsifying her CV, Kari landed a job at Vice magazine as an admin assistant. She said on the podcast: 'I finally got my dream job, which was at Vice magazine. And Vice for me represented everything that I thought was cool, but that I wanted to be, which was edgy, risk-taking, a little off-color, all of that stuff.' She added that finally having a proper job meant she wouldn't have to continue with 'all the shady s***' she had been doing. However, it was during that employment that her precarious existence started to unravel. Having skipped Utah while on bail, Kari had a number of warrants out for her arrest, as well as court dates she had missed - meaning she was on a 'most wanted' list, something she was unaware of. She said: 'It was kind of like little old me, this 20-year-old who had written bad checks - but not to an enormous degree - was on a most wanted list next to murderers, next to people who had legitimate proper Ponzi schemes. That was very confusing for me.' When someone at Vice Googled Kari, they discovered she was wanted. Rather than quietly let her go, they 'unceremoniously' fired her by publishing a post that went viral. Titled Department Of Oopsies! - We Hired AGrifter, the piece said: 'When the time comes for you to take on a new administrative assistant, try plugging your prospective employee's name into this new Internet dealie called Google to make sure she doesn't have any less-than-desirable traits, like, say, five outstanding warrants for fraud in Utah, where she also faked numerous abortions and was run out of town after earning a colorful nickname such as 'The Filth".' The story spread beyond Vice, and was picked up by other news outlets, and one branded Kari the 'Hipster Grifter'. According to Kari, she 'enjoyed that [she] was stirring s*** up'. She added that to her, her victims 'very much represented, to me, the kind of people that I grew up with - all of these white guys who were objectifying and fetishizing me'. She added that while that didn't justify her conning them, there were occasions where she had not planned to swindle anyone, but then had done after they made 'triggering' comments, like: 'I've never had an Asian girl before.' After the story broke, a man she had met several days before at the launch of a DVD texted her and offered to help, saying she could lay low by staying at his place. He promised he wouldn't give her up to the authorities, then sent a car, so she could travel to his home. However, she said: 'When I get there, immediately he answers the door, pulls me in, and starts kissing me. And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! We never talked about this, we never agreed to this. This is not something that I'm wanting to do. I'm going to get out of here."' Kari added: 'And it was essentially a situation where it was like, "Well, you're already here, you're in my place, I'm offering these things, and what's going to stop me from calling the authorities on you now?"' She thought 'this guy has a lot of stuff, like, there's me thinking, "OK, if I'm going to do this, I obviously have to make this worth my while"'. The man she was staying with had 'a thing for infamous people', and wanted her to provide some unusual services for him - like reading articles about herself while he pleasured himself. Setting a two-article limit, she agreed to it. According to Kari, when reading the articles, she became indignant about factual errors in them. Going to bed in what was a second bedroom/office space, she thought to herself: 'What am I doing? I'd rather go live in a roach-infested apartment rather than here with this weirdo.' While there, she decided to make the most of it, and scoured the room for items to steal - including a paperweight, thumb drive, and book of checks. Refusing to name the man, she revealed that he's now a 'person of note' - a business man who's disrupted an industry, and whose name's known in America. She realized 'something has to give', as her limited options were limited to living in a roach-infested apartment or in this spare room - 'neither of which were the most palatable'. Kari said: 'I did want to take care of it. I wanted it to be over. Basically, I took a bus to Philadelphia and was met by several police officers who arrested me, and so I was in a Philadelphia detention center for about 30 days until the State of Utah sent two detectives to handcuff me and put me on a plane to fly me back [there].' She said that in total, she spent around a year incarcerated, and now feels she is totally reformed. Kari explained: 'I truly believe that I will never go back. I will never be incarcerated again. But the parts of me that are reformed are not [reformed] because I went to jail. 'It's 1,000 per cent because of the people I met there, and all of these amazing women who I saw, who have just been completely knocked down and are there's no way for them to get back up. 'There's no way to, you know "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" if you don't even have boots to begin with.' Going on to describe the stress of living with her lies and manipulations, she said: 'I am a queer woman, so my entire life, I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, that I was going to be caught, and that I was running away from something - and that I was bad. 'So it certainly was a heightened version of that, but it was not that uncommon from all the feelings I had had my entire life up until that point.' Opening up about why she had lied to and conned people, Kari said: 'The best that I can give is because of, at the time, my own insecurities, and my own ego, and my own confusion around who I am as a person. 'And now, it's a double-edged sword having a story like this. So, in finding that people are interested in what I have to say, it feels like a disservice to not utilize that in some way, toward moving the needle toward a more compassionate society in some way.'