The founder of a fraud website at the centre of a £100 million scams scheme where they sold fraudulent company details via crypto currency has been arrested. 13 other people, some teenagers were arrested in the east of England and thousands of pounds’ worth of cash, assets and cryptocurrency was seized, as part of an international fraud investigation.
Officers from the Regional Organised Crime Unit undertook warrants in Bedfordshire, Essex, Kent, and Hertfordshire throughout November in connection with a large-scale criminal operation involving fraudsters impersonating the phone numbers of legitimate institutions.
The numbers were available via the iSpoof website which allowed users to buy services via cryptocurrency, enabling them to impersonate the organisations and convince unbeknown victims to provide personal information which was subsequently used fraudulently.
Those arrested, who were aged between 17 and 28, were apprehended on suspicion of offences including fraud by false representation.
Spoof, a website that lets fraudsters impersonate or spoof trusted companies or contacts with the intent to get sensitive information from victims, has been seized and shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Secret Service (USSS). This is part of a greater collaborative effort among international law enforcement authorities in Australia, Canada, Europe, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Europol press release states that iSpoof caused a worldwide loss of over $120.9M (£100M).
Meanwhile, on November 6 the UK’s Metropolitan Police (aka The Met) arrested iSpoof’s main administrator, who was based in East London according to the BBC. Two days after, iSpoof was seized and taken offline by US and Ukrainian authorities.
iSpoof was set up during the height of the pandemic in December 2020. Online criminals found out about it from adverts on encrypted channels on Telegram.
For prices ranging from £150 to £5,000 in Bitcoin per month, its 59,000 users could use specialised software to aid them in their fraud campaigns, such as masking their phone numbers so they could make anonymous calls, sending recorded messages, and intercepting one-time passwords. The tool also allowed fraudsters to impersonate an infinite number of trusted entities—government institutions, banks, and retail companies
As many as 20 people were randomly called every minute, skillfully persuading victims to give the cybercriminals personal details they then used to steal the victims’ money. Victims lost an average of $12,000 (£10,000), with one losing $3.63M (£3M).
The BBC said that fraudsters would often claim to be employees of banks, including Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct, NatWest, Nationwide, and TBS. Most calls (40 percent) were made in the US, while 35 percent were in the UK. The rest of the percentage was spread across other countries.
So far, international law enforcement has arrested 142 users and administrators of iSpoof from all over the world, including Teejai Fletcher (34), the alleged mastermind, who was earning more than $3M and living a “lavish” lifestyle.
More than 200,000 potential victims in the UK alone have been directly targeted through the website, and at one stage almost 20 people a minute were being contacted by scammers hiding behind false identities using the site.
In total, more than 100 arrests have been made by law enforcement agencies across the country.
Detective Inspector Mhairi Shurmer, from ERSOU’s fraud team, said: “These arrests form part of a huge international operation into a group which has fraudulently been targeting innocent people.
“The coordinated approach to tackling those involved has led to those suspected of being behind the website being apprehended, along with the people thought to be utilising the details the site contained.
“Law enforcement agencies both here in the UK and abroad will continue working together to ensure those looking to commit fraud are apprehended and put before the courts.”
The investigations showed that the website has earned over EUR 3.7 million in 16 months. According to UK authorities, losses to victims at present are GBP 43 million (EUR 49 million), with estimated worldwide losses in excess of GBP 100 million (EUR 115 million).
In an international coordinated action carried out in November 2022, 142 users and administrators of the website were arrested across the world. The main administrator of the website was arrested in the UK on 6 November.
On 8 November 2022, the website and server was seized and taken offline by US and Ukrainian authorities.
The case was opened at Eurojust in October 2021 at the request of the UK authorities. National authorities from ten countries, including European Union Member States and third countries, supported the investigation. The Agency played a key role in facilitating the judicial cross-border cooperation among all parties involved. Two coordination meetings were hosted by Eurojust to coordinate the national investigations and to prepare for the action.
On a request of the United Kingdom, Europol started supporting the case earlier that same summer (August 2021). Since then, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) has been providing continuous intelligence development to the national investigators through the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT). In addition, EC3 provided a secure platform for law enforcement to exchange large packages of evidence. In the framework of its analytical work, Europol was able to identify additional users of the iSpoof service, a number of which were already known for their involvement in other high-profile cybercrime investigations at the European level.
The following authorities took part in or supported this investigation:
- Australia: Australian Federal Police
- Canada: Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Federal Policing Cybercrime Investigation Team Toronto
- France: Cyber Criminality Unit – PPO Paris; Law Enforcement : C3N – Gendarmerie Nationale
- Germany: Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office) – Cybercrime Division and Office of the Public Prosecutor General in Bamberg – Bavarian Central Office for the Prosecution of Cybercrime
- Ireland: An Garda Síochána
- Lithuania: Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Lithuania; Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau
- Netherlands: Cybercrime team Midden-Nederland and Public Prosecutor’s Office Midden-Nederland
- Ukraine: Department of cyber police of National Police of Ukraine
- United Kingdom: Metropolitan Police Service (Cyber Crime Unit), City of London Police, and Crown Prosecution Service
- United States: Federal Bureau of Investigation – Pittsburgh Division; United States Secret Service – Pittsburgh Field Office; and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania
