#tarian — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tarian, aggregated by home.social.
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SWATTING: Welsh dark-web administrator jailed over hoax that shut down a Cardiff city-centre street
A man from a quiet south Wales village helped run one of the dark web’s most notorious sites — and triggered a hoax that sent armed police storming onto a packed Cardiff street days before Christmas.
Callum Dare, 26, from Talbot Green, has been jailed after an investigation that drew in the FBI, admitting he encouraged “swatting” attacks across the world from behind his keyboard — egging on others to unleash armed police raids on innocent people’s homes for entertainment.
Swatting is the act of making a false report to the emergency services to trigger an armed response at a victim’s address — a hoax meant to terrify, and often filmed and shared online for kicks.
The term comes from SWAT, the heavily armed special weapons and tactics units used by American police. The “prank” involves fooling those units — or their UK equivalent, armed response officers — into raiding an innocent person’s home, sometimes with fatal results.
Dare was sentenced to two years and three months at Cardiff Crown Court after admitting encouraging and assisting swatting and possessing software used for fraud.
The case was brought by Tarian — the regional organised crime unit that tackles serious and cyber crime across southern Wales — after officers were alerted to an FBI investigation involving Dare in May 2019.
Investigators in the United States had traced a series of swatting incidents to a dark-web platform called Doxbin and a linked chat channel, where users discussed swatting, doxing and other criminal activity.
Doxing is the publishing of someone’s private information — such as their home address — without consent, often to enable harassment or an attack.
Officers identified Dare as an administrator of Doxbin, and said he was an active participant in the associated channel, encouraging and helping others to target people and organisations.
Messages recovered from the channel showed him claiming responsibility for multiple swatting incidents in the United States and Canada, according to the force.
Investigators said he had also produced edited video compilations of emergency responses to swatting attacks, taken from livestreams and other footage, and shared them to encourage others.
The investigation went on to link Dare to a swatting incident far closer to home.
On 17 December 2018, a caller falsely claimed to be armed with nail bombs and holding hostages at the Sandringham Hotel on St Mary Street, Cardiff.
Armed officers were deployed and the street — one of the city’s busiest — was evacuated and closed in the run-up to Christmas, causing widespread disruption.
A forensic examination of Dare’s devices recovered footage, CCTV, audio and news reports about the hoax, which the force said had been edited into a compilation video bearing the Doxbin logo.
Officers also found a compressed file containing malicious code designed to imitate dark-web marketplaces and harvest login details, which could then be used to access cryptocurrency wallets and other accounts.
Rather than stand trial, Dare pleaded guilty on 15 June to encouraging or assisting offences and to possessing an article for use in fraud, contrary to the Serious Crime Act 2007 and the Fraud Act 2006.
A spokesperson for Tarian said the force wanted to send a clear warning about the dangers of the crime.
“The consequences of swatting can be extremely serious,” they said. “False reports place innocent members of the public at risk, cause significant disruption to communities and divert emergency services away from genuine incidents.”
Special Agent in Charge Terence G. Reilly, of the FBI’s Nashville Field Office, said swatting was far from a harmless prank.
“Swatting is not a victimless prank — it is a reckless and dangerous crime that can have deadly consequences,” he said.
Louisa Robertson, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in Wales, said Dare had endangered people for his own gratification.
“Callum Dare put people in danger by encouraging the triggering of armed police responses, for his own thrills,” she said.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
DYFED-POWYS POLICE: Force rated only ‘adequate’ as inspectors raise alarm over organised crime
#Cardiff #CardiffCrownCourt #cyberCrime #darkWeb #FBI #SouthWalesPolice #swatting #Tarian
Inspectors flagged concerns over how organised crime is tackled in the region. -
DYFED-POWYS POLICE: Force rated only ‘adequate’ as inspectors raise alarm over organised crime
Police across southern Wales are spotting strikingly few organised crime threats compared with the rest of the country, a watchdog has warned.
And it comes even as the region boasts some of the highest numbers of raids and disruptions in England and Wales.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) looked at how Dyfed-Powys Police, Gwent Police, South Wales Police and regional crime unit Tarian work together to fight serious and organised crime.
Its report, out today, found that by July last year the region had pinned down just 93 organised crime threats.
The next lowest region in England and Wales had found 219.
Even allowing for the fact that southern Wales is a small region, inspectors said, “this gap is concerning.”
It sits awkwardly next to the headline the forces have trumpeted — that Tarian logged 2,650 disruptions in the year to June 2025, the second highest of any regional crime unit in the country.
Inspectors said the region needed to find “more diverse types” of organised crime, warning it was too focused on crime gangs while missing dangerous individuals and other threats.
Two-thirds of the threats it did find were drug-related — a bigger share than the national average.
Dyfed Powys Police Officer raiding cannabis farm
(Image: Dyfed Powys Police)The watchdog rated Tarian and South Wales Police as “good.” But it marked both Dyfed-Powys Police and Gwent Police only “adequate” — the second of four possible grades.
For Dyfed-Powys Police, which covers Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Powys, inspectors spelled out what was dragging the grade down.
The force’s specialist organised crime team could only handle one investigation at a time, the report found.
In one case, an operation “had made little progress for 12 months” — until the team was finally free to pick it up.
Inspectors also found some frontline officers were shaky on the basics, with a few “unfamiliar with basic” organised crime terms. The force also needed to do better at keeping tabs on crime bosses once they leave prison.
It wasn’t all bad for Dyfed-Powys. The report praised the force’s victim-first approach to fraud, a £3m pot from the police and crime commissioner to tackle serious violence, and 14 officers funded to take crime-prevention talks into schools and universities after the Welsh Government pulled its funding.
The force had also sharpened up its record-keeping, logging 822 disruptions in the year to June 2025, up from 541 the year before.
Specialist officers remove bags of Cannabis from a property
(Image: Dyfed Powys Police)South Wales Police, which covers Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, fared better, earning a “good” grade.
The force had roughly doubled its disruptions, from 1,698 to 3,395 in a year — the biggest tally of any force in the region.
But even here inspectors sounded a note of caution, with analysts telling them there was “at times too much focus on hitting targets” — leading to some disruptions being logged that didn’t meet national standards.
Inspectors singled out the force’s “Clear, Hold, Build” projects — a tactic that floods a troubled area with police and partners, then works to keep crime down for good.
On one estate, the report found that after an 18-month project, calls to the control room fell by 67% and overall crime dropped by 28%.
At the time of the inspection, the force was planning two more such projects, in Swansea and Cardiff.
The Swansea project has since taken shape in Dyfatty, where a major crackdown launched last year cut anti-social behaviour by 69% and later saw empty shops reborn as a community hub.
The report lands as forces across the region keep hammering drug networks, including a multi-area operation that jailed a cocaine gang flooding south Wales with class A drugs and a string of dawn raids by South Wales Police’s organised crime team.
Tarian itself came in for praise. Set up in 2003, the unit became what inspectors believe may be the only regional crime team in England and Wales to hire a dedicated expert in artificial intelligence.
Assistant Chief Constable Gemma Morris, who leads Tarian, said much of the unit’s work was “necessarily covert and often unseen by the public.”
“This report provides an important opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of that work and the difference it makes in protecting our communities,” she said.
She said serious and organised crime “causes significant harm to our communities,” and thanked Tarian’s officers and staff, along with colleagues across the three forces and partner agencies.
ACC Morris said inspectors had recognised many of the unit’s strengths, “including our strong relationships with partners and our commitment to innovation.”
“At the same time, we acknowledge that there are areas where we must continue to improve, and we are already taking forward plans to address the recommendations identified,” she said.
She added: “Our focus remains firmly on protecting the public. We will continue to work closely with our regional forces and partners to disrupt organised crime, safeguard those most at risk, and ensure that offenders are brought to justice.”
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