Police will start getting in touch with over 70,000 Britons starting today after they may have been duped by the greatest scam the nation has ever seen.
It comes after an international investigation including Scotland Yard, the FBI, and European law enforcement agencies resulted in the closure of a website that was used to swindle up to 200,000 people in the UK out of at least £50 million.
Utilizing technology that allowed them to appear as though they were calling victims from banks like Barclays, NatWest, and Halifax, scammers paid a subscription fee to iSpoof.cc.
A total of 59,000 criminals paid subscription fees ranging from £150 to £5,000 to use the technology, earning the site’s owners £3.2 million as they defrauded unwary victims of large sums of money.
The United States had the most victims (40%) and was followed by Britain (35 percent). There were also many targets in Australia and other European nations.
Teejai Fletcher, a 34-year-old east Londoner who is believed to be the genius behind the website, has been charged with fraud and is currently being held in custody after being apprehended earlier this month. The next court appearance is in two weeks.
According to Scotland Yard, the average loss to victims was £10,000, with one losing more than £3 million to fraudsters using the service. It also stated that more than 100 arrests had recently been made in Britain alone.
Losses totaling £48 million have so far been reported to Action Fraud, although the actual sum is almost certainly much greater.
70,000 victims will receive mass texts from the Metropolitan Police today and tomorrow asking them to contact them so they can provide testimony.
Fraudsters would first purchase their victims’ bank information from the dark web to make their approach more convincing, according to Det Supt Helen Rance of the Met. They would then use iSpoof to make a fake bank phone call to empty their accounts, she added.
Following the site’s launch in December 2020, scammers sent ten million phony calls, with 35% of victims located in the UK, 40% in the US, and the other victims dispersed around Europe and Australia.
At one point, callers using technology they had purchased from the website were attempting to target up to 20 people per minute.
On November 7, suspected mastermind Mr. Fletcher was charged with fraud and involvement in organized crime. He was kept behind bars and is scheduled to show up in Southwark Crown Court on December 6.
The encrypted messaging platform Telegram was used by iSpoof to promote itself to potential thieves, calling it “the number one spoofing service.”
It stated: “iSpoof was built by spoofers, for spoofers” next to images of people using computers.
It continues: “Pick up the digits of the target types and see them displayed on your dashboard.” This is in reference to the bank information scammers hoped their victims would type in during their calls.
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It says that the scamming software functions “on both Android and iOS” and that prospective customers can sign up for free and pay on a regular basis in Bitcoin to “remain completely anonymous.”
Subscribers were instructed in a Telegram channel used by iSpoof administrators and users to “change the last digit” when posing as a telemarketer from a bank.
One message advised recipients to “pack their bags and get a job at a grocery store” if their minds weren’t creative enough or their skill set prevented them from performing without a specific number. It seemed that some people were extremely stupid and didn’t understand that the majority of bank numbers were blocked and couldn’t be used.
“If I find you complaining about caller ID without altering the last digit, etc., or wasting our time,” it said, “this can be a reason you are suspended from our service.”
The Met’s chief cybercrime investigator, DSI Rance, described how iSpoof users would con their victims.
They would worry about fraudulent activity on their bank accounts, she claimed, and would also trick them.
According to her, those approached are frequently told to divulge their six-digit banking passcodes, allowing their accounts to be drained.
The Met and Dutch police, who had already begun their own investigation because an iSpoof server was situated there, teamed up to initiate “Operation Elaborate” in June of last year.
The site was completely blocked on November 8 after a later server based in Kyiv was shut down in September.
A TikTok user posted a video the following day with the caption, “RIP to all you iSpoof users,” and one of his followers commented, “50 people bagged already,” along with a laughing emoji, on November 11. There is no evidence that the TikTok user took part in the fraud.
On November 7, the Met filed charges against Mr. Fletcher, the alleged ringleader, for fraud and organized crime group offenses.
It’s reasonable to infer that he was leading an opulent lifestyle, according to DSI Rance, who also noted that the inquiry was still underway.
We have pursued the iSpoof users rather than merely shutting down the website and detaining the administrator, she continued.
“By taking down iSpoof, we have stopped fraudsters from targeting new victims and stopped additional offenses.”
We have your information and are making every effort to find you, no matter where you are. That is the message we want to send to offenders who have utilized this website.
According to the force, two further suspected administrators from outside the UK are still at large.
The amount of potential victims in the UK is “incredible,” according to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, who also said: “What we are trying to do here is industrialize our response to the industrialization of the problem by organized criminals.”
