TalkTalk hacker Daniel Kelley's blackmail charge dropped

TalkTalk was hit by a data breach which affected thousands of customers in October 2015

A man who was involved in a major hack attack of telecoms firm TalkTalk has had a charge of blackmail dropped.

Daniel Kelley, 21, from Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, pleaded guilty in 2016 to 11 charges including involvement in the attack where the personal data of more than 150,000 customers was stolen.

He was due to stand trial at the Old Bailey over making an "unwarranted demand for a quantity of bitcoins".

But the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the blackmail charge.

The court heard Kelley had been suffering from depression and prosecutor Peter Ratliff said it was not in the public interest to proceed to a trial.

Kelley was due to be sentenced at the end of the blackmail trial and will now be sentenced on 25 February.

Personal data belonging to nearly 157,000 customers was stolen from TalkTalk in October 2015.

Email addresses and bank details were taken after the firm's website was breached, an incident that the firm later said had cost it £42m.

Kelley's hacking offences also involved half a dozen other organisations, including a Welsh further education college, Coleg Sir Gar, where he was a student.