A ‘spam' email sparked a horrific four-year stalking ordeal – I feared they'd kill me after receiving a sinister package
She tried telling herself that it was meaningless spam - but soon, more and more messages arrived, increasingly aggressive and sinister.
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The first email read: 'Dear Miss Mossman Moore, we will now take control of your online reputation."
It was from an address purporting to be an online reputation management company.
More messages flooded Hannah's inbox, claiming 'all hell' would break loose if she didn't pay an unspecified amount of money.
Though Hannah didn't know it then, this was only the beginning. Over the next four years, she would be subjected to a horrific ordeal, during which she was stalked both online and in real life, across continents and time zones, by someone seemingly determined to ruin her life.
'You have this creep behind a screen appearing to be this powerful monster,' Hannah tells Fabulous.
'It was terrifying. I didn't feel safe walking down the street, and my family didn't feel safe. It drives you to a very dark place.
'It felt like I was at the centre of an incredibly intricate web, struggling to break free. And every time I moved, I just became more entangled.'
Now, Hannah is sharing her story in Stalked, a new 10-part BBC Sounds podcast that attempts to uncover whether a chance encounter resulted in an unrelenting and escalating campaign of abuse.
Hannah was just 23, fresh out of Edinburgh University and interning at a jewellery start-up, when she met Kin Hung, a 40-something Hong Kong national, at London Fashion Week on September 20, 2015.
'I was working there, trying to get the brand's jewellery into stores in Tokyo and Seoul,' she explains.
I was stalked by my SAS hero boyfriend's ex...I thought I was going to die
'He told me he was well-connected in the Asian fashion market and that he could help. He took my email address.'
Soon, Kin was emailing her every day.
The volume of messages was overwhelming, I was blinded to the fact I was being groomed.
'He was charming and charismatic, and he knew about business and fashion, which I didn't.
"I was naive and trusting,' Hannah says. 'I thought he was gay, so I didn't think he was any threat. I just thought I had a friend and mentor.'
Kin often invited her to exclusive events, but the combination of only earning an intern's salary and her large workload meant Hannah rarely took up his offers.
Instead, they met for the occasional coffee when Kin was in London for work.
Then, in April 2016, she received a message from his email address, claiming to be from his girlfriend, followed by another claiming to be from his boyfriend, and a third, claiming to be from his 'ladyboy' lover.
When she asked Kin about it, he insisted he was single and said his email account had been hacked.
'What we realised in the course of making the podcast was that it was likely that it was Kin's actual girlfriend on his account, wondering who I was and what the hell was going on,' explains Hannah.
'We believe that Kin, realising he had to cover things up, sent emails from 'the boyfriend' and 'the ladyboy' to make it look as insane as possible, so he could tell me it was a hack.'
After that, everything returned to normal, and the pair continued to email daily.
'The volume of messages was overwhelming,' she says. 'I was blinded to the fact I was being groomed.'
In December 2017, Kin invited Hannah to Florida to attend the glamorous Art Basel international art fair and stay with him at his crash pad in Naples, Florida.
'I remember her telling me about the trip and feeling uncomfortable,' said Hannah's former stepmum and Stalked co-host Carole Cadwalladr in the podcast. 'He was an older guy, and Hannah was very young.'
Hannah, however, had no reservations. 'I'd known him for two years by that point, and I thought I knew him,' she says.
'Everyone on my flight was talking about Art Basel. It was so exciting. Then I went straight from my flight to a party at Soho Beach House with Kin.'
The next day, while the pair recovered in his Florida house, Hannah's phone began to buzz with message after message from Kin's girlfriend, warning that he was 'hiding his whole real life' from her.
Again, Kin claimed it was hackers. But now, Hannah wasn't so sure.
I felt scared and controlled – each message was more threatening than the last
Shortly afterwards, an argument developed between them.
Panicked and desperate to leave, Hannah called her brother, who booked her a hotel in Miami and stayed on the phone until she was in a taxi.
The next day, she caught the first available flight back to London, fending off a flurry of messages.
'Kin claimed he'd deliberately created an argument between us so 'the hackers' would think we were no longer friends and leave me alone,' she says.
However, Hannah had seen a side to Kin's personality that frightened her, and after her inbox began to fill up with email after email from him, she sent a one-line reply: 'Leave me alone and let me get on with my life.'
A few days later, another email landed in her inbox, this time, apparently from an online reputation company.
' I felt scared and controlled, ' recalls Hannah. 'Each message felt more threatening than the last, and soon I was getting five messages a day.'
As the intimidation moved offline, Hannah, who'd had her suspicions that Kin was responsible, was now convinced.
'I began getting parcels and letters to my flat – things like a printout of an olive branch, nail polish, and a packet of Werther's Original sweets that was opened but stapled along the seal.
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"I wondered: 'Is this person trying to kill me?' because I didn't know if they were poisoned,' she remembers.
'They were coming so often that I had a routine where I would put gloves on and carry them to the bin outside.
"Sometimes I wouldn't even open them. The level of communication with who I believed to be Kin was always high, and when I cut him out of my life, it remained high – but got more and more negative.'
What to do if you are being stalked
By Emma Kenny, true crime physiologist
Whether the signals are subtle or glaring, trust your instincts. Keep records of suspicious incidents, inform people you trust, and don't hesitate to reach out for professional and legal help if you believe you're in danger.
Your safety is paramount, no one has the right to make you feel unsafe in your own life. Stalking is illegal.
If you think you are in danger or being stalked, report it to the police immediately - you have a right to feel safe in your home and workplace.
Call 999 if you or someone else is in immediate danger.
You can get advice from the National Stalking Helpline.
National Stalking Helpline
Telephone: 0808 802 0300
Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 4pm (except Wednesday 9:30am to 8pm) National Stalking Helpline
Find out about call charges
In March 2018, Hannah moved back in with her dad, but the packages followed her there.
Then, WhatsApp groups started being created by someone posing as her. 'They were set up by a number in my name and the status was 'Karma', meaning payback,' explains Hannah.
'It would be my name, my picture, and all my friends and family were added, and it would start posting terrible things that I was supposedly doing, like avoiding tax. '
Kin even popped up in these chats, defending Hannah from the accusations and threatening the hackers if they didn't leave her alone.
The 'fake Hannah' also targeted the jewellery start-up she had worked for, accusing them of tax evasion, but her previous employers realised the emails were out of character and forwarded them to a lawyer.
'Behaviour escalates in line with the stalker's emotional state,' says Dr Alan Underwood, a clinical psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, who specialises in stalking threat assessment.
'I've seen cases where individuals have escalated behaviour with the intent that the person would seek them out to solve the problem or get support from them.
"This allows them to feel 'connected' to the person they have targeted.'
By the end of March 2018, Hannah was at breaking point.
'The stalking had completely worn me down, both mentally and physically.
'I was constantly anxious, always looking over my shoulder, and unable to sleep. It felt like I was losing parts of myself just trying to stay safe,' she says.
She went to the police armed with as much evidence as she could gather, and officers attempted to arrest Kin, but could not locate him.
They always managed to find out my new numbers, email addresses and social media accounts.
Meanwhile, the stalking continued until, in August 2019, Hannah jumped at the offer to work in Colombo, Sri Lanka, thinking it would offer her a fresh start.
She was wrong. 'In August 2019, I posted a picture of my new boyfriend, who I'd met through a mutual friend in Sri Lanka, on social media and he started receiving emails telling him what a diseased, disgusting person I was,' says Hannah.
Another email to her boyfriend included a rape fantasy.
'They always managed to find out my new numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts,' adds Hannah.
At the same time, she began receiving up to five emails a day from an anonymous account called Premium Escorts, informing her she was now on their books.
People she was in contact with – including work contacts – began getting emails from the bogus agency, which claimed to be selling her sexual services and contained fake reviews from her former 'clients'.
She was bombarded with emails addressed to 'Hooker Hani', with pornographic images attached, as well as language that implied the sender was watching her every move.
One included an image of Hannah at a Halloween party on a beach, cropped into her chest.
'That picture was creepy because it didn't match any of the event pictures on the organisers' website. I don't know where he got that from,' says Hannah.
Despite the continuing abuse, police were unable to confirm that all the emails had come from the same source, and the case was officially closed on January 30, 2020.
Hannah returned to the UK four months later – and again, the stalking followed her. Changing email addresses, passwords and phone numbers eight times in two years had no effect.
I didn't know what was going to happen next. My phone was ringing every second. I would answer, and it would go dead. It was getting worse and worse, and it followed me wherever I went. I couldn't get away from it.
'I didn't know what was going to happen next,' she says. 'My phone was ringing every second. I would answer, and it would go dead.
"It was getting worse and worse, and it followed me wherever I went. I couldn't get away from it.
"It was coming from so many different angles.'
Then, in 2021, Hannah and Carole exchanged emails discussing the possibility of making a podcast about her ordeal.
'Within a month, everything just stopped. Emails, messages, calls. . . everything,' says Hannah, who is convinced this is proof that her emails were being read.
'I felt like I could finally breathe again, but I was still on edge waiting for something else to happen, almost suspicious that the calm wouldn't last.'
In the course of making Stalked, a team of experts were called on to analyse all the emails Hannah was sent, in the hope they could reveal if Kin was solely responsible.
Forensic linguists used by the FBI found that certain words and phrases in emails written by Kin also appeared in emails from her stalker.
Ethical data scientists looked at the technical evidence and concluded that all the emails were coordinated from a single source – a source Hannah believes was Kin, whose current whereabouts are unknown.
He has remained silent throughout the podcast run, speaking only through lawyers, strongly denying stalking Hannah and calling the podcast's allegations 'false and without foundation'.
'Right now, I'm just really loving being free from all of this,' says Hannah, who is still trying to make sense of what happened.
'I've been in survival mode for the last 10 years, and now I'm living life again. I also feel a big responsibility to use my voice and platform to help all the women who are in the shadows right now.
"That was me for so long, and I didn't know where to turn,' she says.
'I still have days where I feel scared. It's hard to fully relax after living in fear for so long.
"The emotional impact definitely doesn't disappear overnight. But, mostly, I feel more powerful now. I know I have a purpose.'
Stalked is available on BBC Sounds now.
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