Crime
Over a Hundred arrested in £48 Million dollar scam in UK
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#UnitedKingdom, November 25, 2022 – More than a hundred people have been arrested in a phone scam that duped more than 70,000 UK citizens out of at least £48 million.
The announcement was made by the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday after its biggest ever fraud operation. The Met says it took down the website iSpoof which it is describing as ‘an international one stop spoofing shop’.
Any criminal after paying via bitcoin, could use the website to ‘iSpoof’ or pretend to be someone else to steal data or money. iSpoof worked by disguising their phone numbers so they seemed trustworthy. After paying, criminals made millions of calls trying to trick residents into giving away one time bank passcodes or outright sending them money.
“Almost 20 people every minute of the day were being contacted by scammers hiding behind false identities using the site,” at one point the Met said.
The site which was created in December 2020 came under investigation in June 2021.
iSpoof had over 59,000 user accounts and fraudsters were logging in from the UK, The Netherlands, France, Ireland and several other areas. Police say they are focusing on the UK violators that spent over £100 of Bitcoin to use the site first.
Detective Superintendent Helen Rance, of the Cyber Crime Unit said, “Our message to criminals who have used this website is we have your details and are working hard to locate you, regardless of where you are.”
The suspected organiser of the website has also been caught.
The initial 70,000 victims were to be contacted on Thursday but the police said as many as 200,000 victims were targeted in England alone. The site was finally busted in an operation that involved the UK’s National Crime Agency, Europol, Eurojust, the Dutch authorities and the FBI.
The Met said losses could be far higher than the initial £48 million figure because fraud is vastly underreported.