Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
70,000 SCAMMED
» 120 arrested after vulnerable are conned into handing over savings » 20 people called every minute by criminals posing as bank staff
ABOUT 70,000 people may have fallen victim to the biggest ever phone fraud.
Crooks rang them up and posed as bank staff to steal tens of millions of pounds.
Police say the probe is the “biggest fraud operation ever run in this country”.
There have been
120 arrests in the UK.
THE 70,000 potential victims of a con that is thought to have cost them tens of millions of pounds will be alerted by police today and tomorrow.
It is part of Britain’s biggest ever fraud probe. The racket involved a phone number scam website.
All the UK numbers called by criminals who used the site will be alerted by a Met police text asking them to contact the force.
The con helped crooks seem like they were calling from the bank.
The scammers would request the victim’s password before siphoning money out of the account.
In the UK, 120 suspects have been arrested – 103 were in London, including the alleged mastermind of the fraud website ispoof.
Scotland Yard’s Cyber Crime Unit worked with the FBI, Europol and the Dutch police for a year-and-ahalf to bring down the site.
UK victims have reported losing almost £48million but the full amount is thought to be a lot higher.
Met police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said: “This is the biggest fraud operation we have ever run in this country.”
One victim lost £3million. At one stage about 20 people were being called by scammers every minute.
About 10 million fraudulent calls were made around the world via the ispoof site in the year to this August.
Globally, there are thought to be 200,000 victims and 59,000 potential suspects who used the website. It allowed criminals, who paid up to £5,000 a month for the service, to hide their real phone number.
Det Supt Helen Rance, at the Met, said other similar websites remain active. She added: “We are aware we haven’t solved this problem.”
The average loss among the 4,785 people who have reported being targeted to Action Fraud is £10,000.
The alleged site administrator Teejai Fletcher, 35, was arrested in East London this mon th.
He is due in court next month charged with making or supplying articles for use in fraud and being a member of an organised crime gang. The server was firstly based in the Netherlands and then Ukraine. tom.pettifor@mirror.co.uk