I used to be intensely stalked for YEARS after snapping one selfie – I modified my telephone quantity and moved home however the offender remains to be a thriller

Aged just 23 and freshly graduated from the University of Edinburgh, Hannah Mossman Moore was excited to attend her first London Fashion Week in 2015.

She was starting her dream job with Alighieri, a jewellery start-up she’d been thrilled to land an internship with, and was excited to be surrounded by top fashion editors, designers and A-list celebrities. 

But underneath all the glitz and glamour, Hannah didn’t realise that her life would soon begin to resemble something out of an episode of Black Mirror.

By taking one seemingly innocent selfie, Hannah would accidentally find herself the victim of a living hell – stalked to the extent she became terrified of her phone, and eventually distancing everyone in her life.  

For four years, she was relentlessly targeted by hackers who stole her identity and posed as her to her friends, family and work colleagues, threatening to destroy her life. 

They held private information about Hannah such as her full name, date of birth and address – along with personal details about her family. Meanwhile, she was told by police there wasn’t enough evidence to investigate, and she feared it would never stop. 

If Hannah tried to outsmart them by changing her phone number, they’d cancel her contract. If she went without her phone, they’d send her parcels. She even moved address – but still, they redirected her mail there.

Years on from the initial selfie, the philosophy graduate has opened up about her terrifying ordeal to her ex-stepmother, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr on BBC Sounds’ podcast, Stalked, for the first time.

With police refusing to intervene further, Hannah and Carole hope the new series will help uncover who is behind the threatening messages once and for all. 

‘Whoever’s behind this campaign knows a lot about Hannah. And they may even be listening to this podcast,’ Carole explained. 

It all started back in 2015, when Hannah saw her friend from across the room on London Fashion Week with a man she didn’t recognise. He was in his late 40s to early 50s, smelt like expensive perfume and had a certain ‘presence’ about him. 

Intrigued by the mysterious man, Hannah – who was working in the designer showrooms where brands connect with potential clients – introduced herself.

His name was ‘Kin’ – as he was referred to in the podcast – and Hannah was immediately impressed by him.  

Hannah said: ‘This guy, Kin, came over with [my friend]. He told me he was connected to all the buyers in Asia and was big in the fashion world. He was dressed quite well, knew everyone and he had a real confidence about him.’ 

Kin, who is from Hong Kong, told her that they would meet up later and have a chat about the industry, inviting her to an exclusive salon for VIPs. 

The pair met up later and got their hair done together, beaming as they took a glamorous selfie together to mark the beginning of a friendship.

Kin wanted Hannah to send him the picture and said it hadn’t come through on his messages, so instead asked her to ping it across via email.  

The interaction seemed harmless. But for Hannah, this picture was the start of years of torment and heartache for her and everyone she was connected to. 

‘It was because of her connection with Kin that a strange ensemble of characters – or hackers – would start contacting her,’ Carole said. 

Hannah said: ‘I wish at this moment someone had said to me, “Turn around”.’ 

As she got closer to Kin, doors opened for her and instead of running around and getting coffees as an intern, she found herself sat on the front row for prestigious shows.

Hannah said: ‘We were keeping in touch via email. He’d ask me how I am, give me a bit of advice. 

‘I found it comforting to have someone older who knew the industry. I knew he was attracted to me. 

‘We really got on, we had a really good connection, we had fun together we made each other laugh and I thought that I could steer that into a friendship.

‘Being an intern for a jewellery brand, you’d be sent out to get the coffee, you wouldn’t be in on the exciting meetings. But all of a sudden Kin believed in me and wanted to mentor me, that felt really good.’

But, in April 2016, eight months after they first met, an email arrived from Kin’s address but it wasn’t from him. Instead, it was from a person who claimed to be Kin’s girlfriend.

Hannah said: ‘This is the first I heard about a girlfriend. He never spoke about a girlfriend, he was never with a girlfriend, he was always free.’

When she went to respond, Hannah then got numerous other emails from people claiming to be connected to Kin romantically, such as his boyfriend. 

Kin told Hannah he was being hacked and to ignore the strange messages she was being sent and they disappeared fairly quickly. 

Hannah said: ‘I thought wow that really sucks, I hadn’t heard of anyone getting into your emails and sending them from your account, I thought that is a severe hack and I felt sorry for him.’

When she turned 24, Hannah moved to Sri Lanka after getting another internship at a gemstone company, meaning the pair drifted apart. 

But she had to return back to the UK and give up her job after catching dengue fever, a viral disease spread by mosquitoes that causes flu-like symptoms.

When Hannah was hospitalised, Kin came back into her life, visiting her to check on how she was doing and would even bring her hot chicken soup.

And, sure enough, when she had recovered, they slipped back into old habits, attending Armani fashion shows and getting on the most exclusive guest lists.

But in November 2017, Kin was hacked again and Hannah received the following email: ‘YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO HE IS AND HOW MUCH MONIES HAS GOT. DO YOU LADY? 

‘WHY HAS HE SPENT SO MUCH MONEY ERASING HIMSELF FROM THE INTERNET AND ADDING FAKE PERSONAL INFO TO THROW US OFF THE TRAIL. HE UNDERESTIMATED US.’

At this stage, Hannah was still able to brush it aside: ‘I just thought “Okay he’s a wealthy guy, obviously he’s going to get hacked”. I thought it was hackers.’

Kin appeared to be stressed out by the hackers and told Hannah that he was going to the police about the issue, adding: ‘Please be assured, I am not hiding anything from you.’ 

A turning point in their relationship came when Kin invited Hannah on a trip to Florida to go to a swanky Art Basil event.  

Hannah – who had known Kin for two years at this point – jumped at the opportunity, much to the dismay of her family, who were growing increasingly anxious about their friendship.

Her father, Dave, told the podcast: ‘It rang a few alarm bells but at the same time I was thinking I wasn’t entirely happy about this. But the other bit of me didn’t want to interfere too much. I felt bad about that later on, that I hadn’t done more.’ 

Carole, who is also one of the hosts on the podcast, said: ‘I remember her telling me about the trip and feeling uncomfortable about it. He was an older guy, Hannah was very young and you’re probably wondering why I didn’t try and stop her. 

‘Chance would’ve been a fine thing. But I did some reckless things in my early twenties and she was an adult and excited to go on this glamorous trip.’ 

What should have been an exciting trip to the States filled with networking opportunities turned into a nightmare. 

After having too much to drink one evening while on the trip, Hannah passed out in Kin’s car and they drove from one side of Florida to the other.

The pair went from Miami to Naples back to Kin’s ‘crash pad’ which was in a gated community, and Hannah passed out in the spare bedroom. 

When asked if there was ever anything physical between them, she said: ‘There was a couple of times that I was so, so drunk and that’s all I want to say on it but we were definitely not in a romantic relationship.’

The morning after, the pair travelled into the centre and went for food in a Mexican restaurant when Kin got odd emails from cyber criminals again.   

He received a message in a group from his sibling which said: ‘There’s been an emergency, mum’s been robbed, they hit her on the head.’ 

Hannah then recalled seeing a large amount of text come through that mentioned ransom and money, which left her feeling shaken.  

Although they’d had quite a lot to drink, Hannah wanted to return to Miami, which is more than 100 miles away. 

Kin told Hannah not to leave and said ‘it wasn’t safe,’ as her phone kept being spammed with messages from faceless accounts.

When he went out to get water, Hannah texted him to say she felt ‘very uncomfortable’ having been left alone and that she was ‘really, really scared’. 

She then told Kin he was being ‘aggressive’.  

In a ‘state of panic’, Hannah decided to call the security guards in the gated community but claimed they just ‘laughed’ at her.  

‘It’s a really scary thing to do, to dial 911,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be overreacting and I felt embarrassed and is this a real emergency?’ 

She had just enough money for a taxi back to Miami but not enough for somewhere to stay, so she called her brother who booked her a hotel room and stayed with her on the phone until the car arrived.

She flew back to London the following morning, under the impression that once she cut Kin off, her life would go back to normal. But the situation only got worse.

Hannah: ‘I was just relieved to be on the flight and going home. The worst thing is that I actually thought it was going to be the end.’

Once he was back on British soil, she contacted the Miami police department and they assigned a case number. However, they told her it was a matter for the UK force to deal with and she never heard from them again.

Hannah then started receiving messages from Kin, to which she responded: ‘I am respectfully asking you to stop contacting me.’ 

However, he claimed he had staged a fake argument so that the hackers would think Hannah was out of his life, thinking that she would be safe and they would no longer contact her. 

Kin’s message read: ‘Hey, I’m sorry, regardless of the rights and wrongs of what happened the truth is I couldn’t bear to see you so scared with the hackers targeting you. Hence, I sabotaged intently so there were paper trails for the hackers to see and cut you loose.’

He said he’d been the target of hackers, who wanted to ‘ruin his life’, and now had moved onto her, emailing her and pretending to be Kin’s girlfriend. 

Kin said he’d deliberately started a fight with Hannah to stop them targeting her, and flew to cybersecurity company Capgemini in London, with the intent to shut it down for good. 

However, Hannah continued getting emails from hackers, one of which read: ‘Lady, we will go away forever or with one click, heavies will be down where you live.’

Kin continued contacting her, stating that he had gotten a cybersecurity company involved in the situation. But Hannah sent him one final email: ‘Leave me alone and let me get on with my life.’

Kin, however, did not leave her alone, and continued to send her ’email after email’.  He told her: ‘Be careful with your words, once they have been said they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.’ 

When approached by the BBC, Kin said he denies the claims about him in their entirety and says they are ‘completely false and without any foundation’.

In early 2018, after their trip to Florida, Hannah received strangely worded emails from Kin, asking her to give back the furniture he had gifted her when she moved into her flat in London.

These included a sofa, tumble dryer and four dining table chairs. However, Kin’s message also said that Hannah owed him money. 

She repeatedly attempted to set up a drop off of the goods by asking for his address, all while stating that she owed him nothing. 

However, Kin wasn’t listening and continued badgering her for the furniture without providing a solution to the situation.

But when she sent yet another message, she got an automated response which said that he hadn’t had access to his emails since January 5, 2018 when the cyber criminals took control of his account. 

When asked if she believed him, Hannah said: ‘I did and I felt relieved for a minute because when I found out it was hackers I was like okay, this explains it.’

But this is when then the messages became increasingly more targeted towards Hannah and her life got turned upside down. 

A new anonymous person started contacted her from another email address, thanking Hannah for signing up to the ‘online reputation management services’.

The email contained her full name, date of birth and genuine private details about Hannah and her family. 

It stated that payment would now be taken from the bank details on their records. Hannah said: ‘It was really scary and they were so good at it.’

Hackers would also constantly harass Hannah, bombarding her phone with calls to the point where she would pick up and yell: ‘What do you want?’ But the caller would remain silent for a couple of seconds before the line went dead.

She kept changing her phone number in a bid to get rid of the stalkers, but they would keep returning. 

‘They would send the email and then something would happen in real life,’ she said. 

Hannah elaborated and said they would send details to her about her phone contract and then the hackers would deactivate her number.

And when she called her phone company to ask what had happened, they’d simply say that she had reached out to them from an email which was Han, followed by her birthday, @gmail.com, asking them to shut it off. 

They then started targeting her father, deactivating his mobile on Father’s Day.

By age 26, Hannah went phone-free in an attempt to enjoy a more peaceful life where she couldn’t be harassed online.  

Speaking about phones, she said: ‘I don’t think I had any idea that something which brought me so much joy could bring me so much pain and anxiety, I couldn’t even imagine it.’ 

While emails continued to come through, the stalkers had moved on to sending Hannah physical mail to her address. 

Parcels would come to her door, with different versions of her name each time. It became such a regular occurrence, that Hannah made a system where she’d already have her gloves on and immediately bin them as soon as they arrived. 

Speaking about the few she did unwrap, Hannah said she once found a Werther’s Originals which had been opened and stapled together along the seal, nail varnish, and a menu for a restaurant.

‘It started to really bring me down,’ she said. ‘I would often get ready to go out and then panic and then delay and delay and then end up not going out. I started to overthink what to say when people asked how I was.’

Hannah then moved back in with her father, to which Dave said: ‘She started hanging out with me, almost clinging to me actually and I thought, she really needs me.’

But the torment didn’t end, as the day after she moved, the sinister parcels started arriving at her new address. 

She would also get emails from people posing as her father, attempting to trick Hannah that he was hurt.

These would read: ‘Hannah, it’s dad, you need to call me, I’m in hospital.’

Another email from a hacker said: ‘What you’ve seen so far is nothing, just a teaser to warn you what could happen so don’t push us. This between us two and nobody else.’ 

They then gained access to her social media accounts and posed as Hannah on WhatsApp groups with her friends, family and with her old work colleagues.

She wasn’t aware this was happening and the account would send messages like: ‘I think I need to get some advice and be a bit careful on my assumption that the rules do not apply to me.’

The messages they wrote as Hannah got more and more sinister as time passed. Hannah said: ‘If someone is going this far, I thought f***, what’s next?’

It caused her to get anxious about meeting up with her own friends and would often turn down parties to the point where she didn’t get invited anymore.  

‘I was scared to leave my house, scared to open my phone, afraid of what I’d see,’ Hannah said, ‘My phone became my enemy.’

‘I was absolutely exhausted and at the end of my tether. I just wanted it to stop. It also terrified me – if someone is going this far, I was thinking, f***, what’s next.’

She said she didn’t know how to tell her friends what was happening, as she didn’t know what was happening herself. 

Hannah admitted she’d just received a text from a close friend, who told her he hadn’t invited her to a gathering, as he just assumed she would ‘say no’. 

She noticed that a lot of the emails had a similar theme – many of them were fixated on her former employer, a small jewellery company she’d worked for after her internship with Alighieri. 

Some of them were written in poor English with grammatical errors. 

After contacting her employer for the first time since she left – they urged her to get on a call with them as soon as possible. 

The BBC’s new series Stalked releases episodes weekly. The first two episodes are available to listen to now. To find out more about Hannah’s story, tune in next week.