Man ordered enough ricin on Dark Web to kill up to 1,400

A computer-obsessed man ordered enough deadly poison on the Dark Web to kill 1,400 people then set about finding a rabbit, chinchilla or other “pocket-sized pet” to test it on, a court heard.

Father-of-two Mohammed Ali, 31, from Liverpool, allegedly tried to buy 500mg of ricin worth €500 (€457) from a dealer in the United States who went by the names of Dark Mart and Psychochem.

But the software programmer was unaware that the man he had been communicating with on the internet black market was in fact an undercover FBI agent known as Peter who alerted British police.