(Natural News)—The alleged kingpin behind a global cybercrime network has been arrested through the collaborative effort of three law enforcement agencies, putting an end to a harmful malware operation.
The Malta Police Force (MPF) arrested 27-year-old Daniel Meli on Feb. 7, with three agencies – namely the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) – working together for this purpose. An intelligence report from the AFP confirmed the cyber criminal’s arrest.
A separate report by the FBI said the Maltese national backed the Warzone remote access Trojan (RAT) malware. Warzone allows attackers to control computers remotely, access files, record keystrokes, steal login details and spy through webcams in Australia and worldwide.
The FBI added that Meli had provided malware products and services for sale to cybercriminals through online computer-hacking forums since 2012. He allegedly helped cybercriminals trying to utilize RAT software for malicious purposes and offered teaching tools for sale, including an e-book.
Meanwhile, AFP Commander Chris Goldsmid stated people with malicious intent purchased the subscription software for as little as A$25 ($16) monthly, allowing them to target both businesses and individuals.
“For a small cost, individuals with nefarious intentions could purchase software that would allow them to gain access to a victim’s computer and personal information,” Goldsmid said. “Cybercrime is increasing in scale and frequency, and it is important the public takes proactive steps to keep their personal information safe.”
People inadvertently installed the malware on their systems by downloading email attachments or clicking on links to seemingly legitimate websites. According to Goldsmid, this boiled down to criminals thinking outside the box. (Related: FBI warns of “Phantom Hacker” scams WIPING OUT senior citizens’ life savings.)
“These criminals are not bound by traditional borders, which means law enforcement agencies have to unite to make a lasting impact,” he said. The AFP commander added that police officers collected important information, along with the details of people who purchased the malware.
“This operation is an example of what the AFP’s International Network can accomplish with partners like Europol and the FBI. This is not the end of this investigation. With the intelligence we have gathered, we will be working with our partners at Europol and the FBI to track down those who have purchased this software.”
Sites and host servers for Warzone also taken down
The operation did not only involve Meli’s arrest. Law enforcement also closed down sites and host servers to prevent the Warzone malware from being used by more cyber criminals in the future.
In a separate operation done on the same day, 31-year-old Prince Onyeoziri Odinakachi was arrested in Nigeria. According to reports, the Nigerian allegedly offered customer support to individuals who bought and used the Warzone malware from June 2019.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Odinakachi was charged by a federal grand jury in the district of Massachusetts on Jan. 30. The charges against him include conspiracy to commit multiple computer intrusion offences, including acquiring authorized access to protected computers to obtain information and causing unauthorized damage to protected computers.
A month prior in December 2023, a federal grand jury in Georgia charged Meli with causing unsanctioned damage to protected computers, illegally selling and advertising an electronic interception device and participating in a conspiracy to commit numerous computer intrusion offenses.
“Daniel Meli will no longer escape accountability for his actions selling malware. This alleged cybercriminal facilitated the takeover and infection of computers worldwide,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “Our office was proud to partner with our federal and international counterparts to find Meli and bring him to justice.”
Meanwhile, FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Brian Vorndran said the arrests show the bureau’s dedication to shutting down cybercriminals and demolishing their networks. “The FBI is proud of the international coordination involved in this law enforcement effort, and we will continue to build global partnerships,” he said.
Follow Glitch.news for more stories about cybercriminals and cybercrimes going on around the world. Watch the video below about 14 million U.S. homeowners being hit by a massive cyberattack.
This video is from the Thisisjohnwilliams channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
- Japanese government sources confirm Chinese hackers stole classified diplomatic information during 2020 cyberattack.
- Several federal agencies HACKED as part of global cyberattack that exploited a flaw in popular file-sharing software.
- LAZARUS HEIST: The international ATM theft that bagged $14M in just over 2 hours.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
