My eight-year-old son ordered an AK-47 and ammo on the dark web

A mother warns of the dangers of the Dark Web after her 8-year-old son managed to order a gun and ammunition.

Barbara Gemen, a human resources specialist in the Netherlands, expressed her horror when an AK-47 appeared on her doorstep.

She said her son, who she wishes to keep anonymous, was “very, very excited” that he managed to receive the package – which was routed via nearby Poland and Bulgaria to evade customs checks – after using the dark web.

But the horrified mother turned the gun over to the authorities. The police and his school did nothing, she said.

Ms Gemen’s son was cared for by a gang of cybercriminals and she is now committed to helping young people avoid being lured by gangs (Image: Ms Gemen)

A package containing an AK-47 arrived at Mrs. Gemen’s door (stock image)

Ms Gemen said: “It sounds straight out of a movie, but I was shocked to learn that my eight-year-old son had set out on a journey to become a cyber-hacker, a path paved with alarming choices and lasting consequences.”

Her son, now 20, was an avid gamer growing up and regularly stayed up late into the night playing computer games.

The teen even took a job to get paid by others to boost their accounts when they logged in at the weekend.

But Ms Gemen said things took a turn when he encountered what she called a group of cybercriminals in an online game.

He started out with small actions, such as ordering a pizza online without paying, but Ms Gemen said he then began using bank accounts to launder money for others – using computer games to obfuscate the transactions.

She said she learned afterwards that her son had spent weeks on internet forums figuring out how to order the gun and make sure it arrived safely at his home address.

He would hide his activities from her with code words, she said, such as saying “Pitt is coming to our place” whenever she entered the room while he was online.

Speaking to EuroNews, she added: “My son started chopping when he was eight years old.” And that’s when he ordered a gun.

“I think he spent a month figuring out how to order the gun and have it shipped to our home.

“He opened it and was really excited that he had managed to get a gun delivered to our home.”

‘[But] I was completely shocked. “I immediately decided to do things differently at home.”

The weapon was ordered through the dark web, a part of the internet that has no publicly available links and can only be accessed by special software like Tor.

Anything from guns to illicit drugs can be bought for free with cryptocurrency on illicit dark web markets.

The boy had been working with an international group of hackers and had gotten up in the middle of the night to “work”, with the criminals enticing him into increasingly serious hacking attacks.

Ms Gemen said she received little support from the boy’s police or school and learned about cybercrime by looking through his browsing history and searching for terms online.

Kaspersky research found that only 11 percent of parents believe their child would be capable of committing cybercrime.

Kaspersky research found that only 11 percent of parents believe their child would be capable of committing cybercrime.

Ms. Gemen has quit her old job and is now campaigning for children involved in cybercrime.

She said, “It’s so easy these days because a lot of kids have laptops and cell phones and you can basically do a hack with a few clicks.” It’s a pretty big problem to stop young people from hacking. They often don’t know what is legal and what is illegal.”

She says parents need to set “cyber boundaries” to keep their kids safe.

Research from Michigan State University in 2019 found that young boys who spent a lot of time playing video games and had the freedom to do whatever they wanted online were more likely to be involved in hacking.

Young people who own their own phone from an early age are more prone to hacking.

Gemen said: “It is imperative that we educate young minds and protect them from the blurred boundaries of a digital environment.”