UK and FBI tackle call centre phone scams
British police to partner with US crime agencies as part of global operation against phone fraudsters
BRITISH police are to join with the FBI and US Secret Service agents to mount a crackdown on call centres scamming victims worldwide, as Interpol issued a global alert on the threat.
Writing in The Telegraph, James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, revealed the plans for the link-up with the National Crime Agency (NCA) amid growing concerns over the global spread of call centres using trafficked victims to send out millions of scam texts or make fraudulent calls.
Interpol has classed it as a “serious and imminent threat to public safety” because of the industrial scale of scam calls and texts being sent out impersonating representatives from major companies like Microsoft, banks, utilities and HMRC to persuade victims to hand over money or personal data.
The international police agency’s global Orange Notice to member countries follows evidence that the online scam centres which were concentrated in Cambodia have spread to several other Asian and African countries, with Britons being bombarded with an estimated 21 million scam calls a month, equivalent to eight a second.
“I am excited to announce that our NCA, the FBI, US Secret Service and America’s Homeland Security Investigations will be working together to tackle call centre frauds across the world, sharing their world-class expertise and stepping up the fight back against fraudsters,” writes Mr Cleverly.
“This is the kind of co-operation we need to defeat a truly evil crime. And we know it works. We must do more to work together across the world.
“We need to share more data and intelligence internationally, raise global standards, and make tackling fraud an international priority. Different countries’ law enforcement teams already collaborate, but we need to redouble our efforts.”
It comes ahead of the world’s first global fraud summit on Monday hosted by the UK where ministers and officials from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea as well as the UK and US will discuss ways to boost international co-operation to combat fraud.
More than 200 representatives from banking, tech and telecommunications will attend the two-day summit, alongside leading civil society organisations to consider what the private sector can improve to prevent fraud and reimburse victims of scams.
Interpol said organised crime gangs were using large-scale human trafficking to lure victims with fake job ads to work in online scam centres and then forced to commit cyber-enabled financial crime on an industrial scale.
Victims at the centres were often extorted to co-operate through debt bondage where their low pay does not cover the cost of accommodation and food supplied by the gangs. It can be accompanied by beatings, torture, sexual exploitation and even alleged organ harvesting, according to Interpol.
The trafficked workers are used to perpetrate payment and investment impersonation frauds as well as romance and gambling scams.
Intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic, including GCHQ and MI6 and US Secret Service, have been drafted in to bring their intelligence gathering expertise to tackle fraud, some 70 per cent of which originates from abroad.
Home Office sources said that the US-UK co-operation over call centres would include intelligence sharing as well as joint operations using covert and technological investigative techniques to help local police disrupt and dismantle the crime gangs behind the frauds.