Times trainee Alexi Mostrous delivered an exclusive splash for his paper about the financial details of thousands of Britons being sold on the Internet.

The story was all the more remarkable for having been found, researched and written by Alexi while he was still completing his studies on the 16-week training course.

Alexi is nearing the end of his stint and like the rest of the course has his hands full with learning shorthand, public administration and law – though this last subject should not prove too testing for him as he is a former barrister.

He said: "After the loss of the HMRC child database, I wanted to see exactly how criminals bought and sold confidential information on the web.

"I discovered there were hundreds of Internet sites where fraudsters could advertise stolen credit card or pin numbers.

"A bit more research brought up actual bank details on more than 30 people around the UK. They were offered as free 'samples' to encourage criminals to place big orders.

"I downloaded the information, contacted the people concerned, passed everything on to the Metropolitan Police and the Information Commissioner, and wrote up the story."

Course leader, Paul Jones, said: "This was a tremendous achievement for Alexi and it was all his own work.

"He found the site selling the details and had been monitoring it for some time. It was a great scoop and the excitement on the course about it was electric.

"We have had a great run of page leads in the Newcastle papers this course including three splashes in the morning paper but to get a national front page lead is rather special."

As Alexi was in Newcastle on the day his story was used, he only found out that it was the splash when he heard John Humphrys reading it out on the Today Programme.

"There was a certain amount of jumping about the room at that point I can tell you," he said.