Inside the chilling lair of paedophile Cambridge graduate who made his victims eat dog food
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Under the username '666devil' Matthew Falder, from Birmingham, asked
dark web users for ideas on how to torture his 'daughter' as part of a
'hell week'
These chilling images show the squalid lair where a depraved paedophile preyed on more than 200 vulnerable victims before sharing photos of their abuse on the dark web.
Footage
shot inside Cambridge University graduate Matthew Falder's pokey flat
shows clothes, food containers and laundry strewn over the floor - as
well as a roll of toilet paper on his bed.
Today he was jailed for 32 years for abusing and blackmailing a string of vulnerable victims, including a girl who he ordered to eat dog food.
The 29-year-old's desk was piled with rubbish and what looks to be a tub of dried up mushrooms.
Falder's bed was surrounded by rubbish (Image: SWNS.com)
Falder is a Cambridge University graduate (Image: SWNS.com) Other objects surrounding his desktop computer included multiple pairs of scissors, superglue, wine glasses, tissues and cloths.
The
National Crime Agency (NCA) launched a manhunt in April 2015 after he
used the username '666devil' to ask fellow dark web users for ideas on
how to torture his 'daughter' as part of a 'hell week'.
The post
sparked a nationwide hunt by the NCA to safeguard the girl, who turned
out to be the daughter of another of Falder's victims.
Dr Matthew Falder is a paedophile who blackmailed his internet victims into carrying out degrading sex acts (Image: SWNS.com) Investigators linked the user to the 'evilmind' and 'Inthegarden' accounts, which Falder had used to torture his victims.
Intelligence
gathered by NCA, US Homeland Security, Australian Federal Police and
Europol linked a person of interest to an address in Birmingham.
He
was arrested in June last year after three traumatised victims, who
were tricked into sending him humiliating images, attempted to end their
own lives.
In footage of his arrest on June 21, 2015, Falder is heard telling officers: "So, what is it I am supposed to have done?"
The
geophysicist - wearing a yellow T-shirt - then tells officers the list
of offences he is charged with sounds "like the rap sheet from hell."
In the 1.12-minute footage supplied by the NCA, Falder repeatedly responds "no comment" when quizzed on his crimes.
Falder's desk and computer in his flat rubbish-filled flat (Image: SWNS.com) He eventually provided two prepared statements - in one, admitting that he controlled the 'evilmind' account.
Further
surveillance shows the ex-Birmingham University post-doctorate
researcher secretly setting up 'Peeping Tom' cameras in bathrooms and
shower cubicles.
Although a handful of UK-based victims reported
him, he was able to avoid detection by using more than 70 different
online identities.
Falder also used the 'Tor network' which helps
users hide their identities by encrypting connections and bouncing it
around global volunteers to make it much harder for the authorities to
trace.
Falder suggested a sick
game in which a curling iron would be inserted into a woman's vagina and
could only be turned off if they answered a question correctly He would regularly post on 'Hurt 2 The Core', which is
considered to be the world's worst website and is dedicated to: "Both
the child love and hurtcore aspects of pedophilia."
An extract on
the site reads: "If you do not agree with that, or are easily offended,
then this is not the place for you, welcome to H2TC."
He also
shared an instructional video on how to sexually abuse children as well
as guidance on how to give youngsters sweets which were soaked in urine
or semen.
He was arrested in June
last year after three traumatised victims, who were tricked into sending
him humiliating images, attempted to end their own lives (Image: SWNS.com) In further posts, he wrote about arranging to meet a
blackmail victim for sex in a remote location and told how he would make
the person tie themselves to a tree, lock the bindings and throw away
the key to ensure a slow and painful death.
Falder also suggested
a sick game in which a curling iron would be inserted into a woman's
vagina and could only be turned off if they answered a question
correctly.
He posted a video of a man repeatedly throwing a young
child who couldn't swim into a pool, with the child submerged for
several seconds each time and a three minute long video of a woman
kicking and then beating a four-year-old boy with a stick.
Posing as a female artist he used dozens of aliases to contact more than 50 victims over seven years (Image: SWNS.com) Senior investigating officer for the NCA Matt Sutton said:
"He was not about money, his currency was his kudos in the community and
he traded in these types of images.
"He approached over 200
people, people posting that they needed babysitting work or dog walking,
that they needed money or needed a home.
"He was approaching people in Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and Slovenia.
"He
used Tor, anonymising the use of his internet and used over 22 email
accounts including Safemail, based in Israel and Yandex, based in
Russia.
"He had approximately 70 different online identities."
Falder, of Edgbaston, Birmingham, admitted 137 charges (Image: SWNS.com) Falder believed that his IT skills meant he was invincible to law enforcement and would not get caught.
"Falder's
use of anonymising techniques made him very difficult to catch, this
highlights previously unknown and very horrific offending," Mr Sutton
said.
"Falder is not alone, there are many other users on these dark web sites.
"Anecdotal
sources appear to suggest that the hurt core community is a hated
minority within an already hated group - described as 'the worst of the
worst'.
"Falder's victim targeting showed a level of directed activity, organisation and advanced manipulation."
Dirty socks and rubbish around Falder's bed (Image: SWNS.com) He continued: "As well as blackmailing and extorting
victims, he also enjoyed simply engaging them in conversation in which
he can hear about the suffering of another, or otherwise push
boundaries, so long as the activity or material involved victim
suffering.
"His primary motivation was for power and control, suffering and humiliation.
"Believing he had superior intellectual and computational abilities, he was confident that he could outwit law enforcement.
"There
is little doubt that Falder would have continued his offending and
caused untold pain and distress to many other vulnerable people.
"This was a man who was using the widest range of techniques to hide his identity."
Falder was jailed for 32 years (Image: REUTERS) Mr Sutton added that Falder's only motivation was to 'cause pain' to others.
"It's very difficult to understand a crime where the motive does not include sex, passion, money, revenge or hate," he said.
"When the sole motivation of an individual is purely to cause pain to another, that's quite hard to grasp.
"Most crimes you can see the motive, you can see where it comes from.
"In this individual the sole motivation was to inflict pain on another and the journey to that."
Falder encouraged a teenager to rape a four-year-old boy online (Image: SWNS.com) Matthew Long, NCA operations strategic lead, said: "Falder
thought he wouldn't be caught and I think he actually was probably the
type of individual that would be telling people he wouldn't be caught on
the anonymous servers and then living a completely different life in
his day-to-day life.
"Ultimately that wasn't the case. Ultimately
we, with our international partners, caught him and with the help of
the victims we have put him in prison.
"For us this has been a
relentless pursuit to catch Dr Matthew Falder, but what saddened me is
his relentless pursuit of the victims.
"He would stop at nothing
to exploit them, to make them feel sad, humiliated or unhappy and he
didn't really care in any way, shape or form how that manifested.
"Ultimately
that has devastated some people's lives and I am very proud of our team
and also those victims being able to stand up and stop him.
"Matthew
Falder is part of a very small group of people that took it to an
extreme where it was about absolute exploitation, about absolute pain
and really the degradation of humans within society."
The geophysicist told officers the list of offences he is charged with sounds "like the rap sheet from hell" (Image: SWNS.com) A GCHQ spokesperson added: "This is a horrific case and our hearts go out to the victims.
"GCHQ
is determined to use our expertise in both cyber security and digital
communications to counter this type of terrible online child sexual
abuse.
"Protecting the digital homeland - in this case keeping children safe online - is a crucial part of our mission.
"We
will continue to work in partnership with NCA and law enforcement to
make the internet a hostile environment for these types of offenders to
operate."
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