The £100m fraudster
UK mastermind of international scam website is put behind bars
THE mastermind of a website that helped fraudsters con victims out of £100million was jailed yesterday.
Tejay Fletcher, 35, developed technology that allowed the criminals who used his iSpoof website to make scam phone calls in which they appeared to be from banks when they
rang unsuspecting victims.
He had 44,459 subscribers – known as ‘spoofers’ – paying at least £150 a month to use his services. In addition to scam calls, other features offered through the site helped users
obtain passwords and PINs to empty the victims’ bank accounts.
Globally his criminal enterprise cost victims a total of £100million, of which £43million was swindled from Britons. Using his website, conmen targeted 200,000 people in the UK. Up to 7,000 were tricked into handing over money, losing amounts varying from thousands of pounds to £2million in one case.
Fletcher earned £2million from his site and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of supercars and expensive watches, as well as a plush apartment in a trendy waterfront development near Canary Wharf in east London. He spent £230,000 on a silver
Lamborghini Urus and had two Range Rovers worth a total of £120,000. He also enjoyed frequent holidays to Jamaica, Malta and Turkey.
As well as an £11,000 Rolex, he also had an Audemars Piguet watch – although the latter turned out to be a fake, prompting prosecutor John Ojakovoh to joke: ‘You can’t trust anyone these days.’
Jailing Fletcher for 13 years and four months at Southwark Crown Court in London yesterday, Judge Sally Cahill KC said: ‘The evidence in my view shows very clearly your
leading role and your active role in creating a sophisticated article for fraud which generated substantial profit for you.
‘It is submitted on your behalf that whilst you knew there were victims, you did not appreciate the effect on victims until you saw the impact statements. In my judgment, that simply indicates that you did not care either who the victims were or what the impact was upon them.
‘Victims report their businesses suffering, substantial personal financial problems, sleeplessness, depression and emotional stress and fallouts with family members due to the losses. For all, it has been a harrowing experience.’
Detective Sergeant Richard Nolan and Detective Constables Edward Sehmer and Ravi Raj Rayan were commended by the judge for their 700-day investigation. They enlisted the aid of the National Crime Agency, the FBI in the US and police in Ukraine and the Netherlands.
Fletcher was caught after police paid for access to his website posing as fraudsters using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which is often used by criminals because it is harder to trace than cash.
He admitted one count of making articles for fraud, one of encouraging the commission of an offence, one of possessing criminal property and one of transferring criminal property.
‘A harrowing experience’