A UK man has been sentenced to 13 years and four months for running a multi-million-pound fraud website that led to the theft of at least £100m ($124.2m) globally. Of this, £43m ($53.4m) was taken from UK victims alone.
As the fraud is a heavily underreported crime, the law enforcement agencies believe that the actual losses might be far higher.
Tejay Fletcher, 35, from London, responsible for his role as the administrator of iSpoof online phone number spoofing service, pleaded guilty to charges of making or supplying articles for use in fraud, encouraging or assisting the commission of an offense, possessing criminal property and transferring criminal property. The crimes took place between November 30, 2020 and November 8, 2022.
A large international law enforcement operation led by London’s Metropolitan Police in coordination with the City of London Police, the National Crime Agency, Europol, Eurojust, Dutch authorities and the FBI lead to the arrest of the man.
While Fletcher was not directly responsible for the scams, his phone number spoofing website offered tools for hire that enabled its users to launch sophisticated financial scams.
Criminals used the service’s technology to pose as representatives of banks including Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds and Halifax. They would call members of the public to warn of suspicious activity on their accounts, and ask them to disclose sensitive security information, such as one-time passcodes, to access their money.
The software allowed users to mask their phone numbers to trick victims into believing that the call was actually from the bank.
iSpoof users could choose from numerous packages and they could make Bitcoin payments to purchase the number of minutes they wanted to use software to make the calls.
According to the Met Police, the site had 59,000 registered users and before iSpoof was shut down in November 2022, iSpoof was growing at a rate of 700 new users every week.
In total, iSpoof made over £3m ($3.73m) during its period of operation, with Fletcher earning around £1.7-1.9m ($2.1-2.36m) in profit.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley commented that closing down iSpoof has been the UK’s biggest ever fraud operation with a collective effort.
In addition to prosecuting the man responsible for running the service, the investigation led to the dismantling of the iSpoof website. Law enforcement are also continuing to target the fraudsters who paid to use its services.
Image Credits : AltChar
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